Red Mercury (1856) — Austria's Rarest Newspaper Stamp

The Red Mercury (German: Rote Merkur or Zinnoberroter Merkur) is a vermilion Austrian newspaper stamp issued in 1856 to prepay bundles of ten newspapers. Because it was stuck to wrappers that were torn off and discarded, only a small number survive, making it one of the great rarities of classic European philately.

How to identify a Red Mercury

All Mercury newspaper stamps share one design: the left-facing head of Mercury, the Roman messenger god, wearing a winged helmet inside a square frame inscribed K.K. ZEITUNGS POST STÄMPEL (Imperial-Royal newspaper post stamp), with small rosettes in the corners. The design was engraved by Josef Axmann and the stamps were typographed at the Imperial-Royal State Printing Works in Vienna, imperforate, so genuine copies were cut from the sheet with scissors.

Crucially, no face value is printed anywhere on the stamp — the colour alone indicated the rate. Blue paid for a single newspaper, yellow (from 1851) and later vermilion red (from 1856) paid the 6 kreuzer rate for a bundle of ten newspapers, and rose paid for larger bundles. The Red Mercury is therefore identified purely by its vivid vermilion shade combined with the standard Mercury design.

Almost every Mercury stamp a collector encounters is the common blue one. Genuine red examples are so rare and valuable that the market is full of forgeries and of blue Mercuries chemically altered to look red or rose. Colour alone is never enough: paper, printing characteristics and provenance must all be examined, and any serious candidate needs a certificate from a recognised expert in classic Austria.

History

Austria introduced the Mercury stamps on 1 January 1851 as the world's first newspaper stamps, allowing publishers to prepay the postage on newspapers sent to subscribers. The blue 0.6 kreuzer Mercury franked a single newspaper and was printed in vast quantities; the higher values served addressed bundles dispatched to agents and large subscribers.

The 6 kreuzer value for bundles of ten was first issued in yellow in 1851. The yellow ink proved impractical — the pale colour was hard to distinguish and cancellations barely showed — so in 1856 the value was reissued in a strong vermilion red. This is the stamp collectors call the Red Mercury, in use only briefly before the Mercury newspaper series was replaced by a new design in 1858.

The high-value Mercuries were attached to the wrapper or address band of the bundle, not to the newspapers themselves. Once the bundle reached the news agent the wrapper was ripped off and thrown away, which is why the blue Mercury survives in millions while the yellow and red Mercuries vanished almost completely.

Rarity and varieties

Only a few dozen genuine Red Mercuries are believed to survive, most of them used, and a number of those are repaired or with faults. Unused examples are of the utmost rarity, and pieces on the original wrapper rank among the trophies of Austrian philately. The companion Yellow Mercury of 1851 is rarer still, and the two are usually mentioned together as the keys to classic Austria.

Specialists distinguish printings on hand-made and machine-made paper as well as shade nuances from rose-red to deep vermilion. These distinctions matter for expertising, because colour-changed blue stamps and outright forgeries — some of them well over a century old themselves — make up the majority of 'red' Mercuries offered without certificates.

Anyone who believes they have found a Red Mercury should resist cleaning or pressing it and submit it, as found, to a recognised expertising authority for classic Austrian stamps. Provenance from an old collection helps considerably, since the genuine population is small and substantially documented.

Estimated value

As a broad, hedged estimate only: genuine used Red Mercuries have traded from roughly the low tens of thousands of USD for faulty or repaired examples up to well over 100,000 USD for fine certified copies, with exceptional pieces and items on the original wrapper beyond that. These are rough auction-based guides, not catalogue values. Remember the base rate: nearly all Mercury stamps found in collections are the common blue ones, often worth tens of dollars, and most red-looking Mercuries turn out to be forgeries or altered colours — only an expert certificate turns a candidate into a five- or six-figure rarity.

Frequently Asked Questions