COSTLY BLUNDERS
By Julia Lieblich

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Though philately lacks the cachet of collecting art or cars, about 19 million Americans collect stamps, including Marc Haas, president of American Diversified Enterprises, and publisher Malcolm Forbes. Beginning in April, collectors will have their pick of some of the world's rarest stamps when the collection belonging to Alfred F. Lichtenstein and his only daughter, Louise Boyd Dale, comes up for auction. Dale died in 1967, and the first part of the collection, auctioned by H.R. Harmer of New York between 1968 and 1970, brought $3.5 million. Dale's will stipulated that the second half could be sold in 1989, and Harmer expects it to fetch about $10 million, among the highest prices ever for stamps. Says Peter Robertson, curator of the Philatelic Foundation in New York City: ''It's a connoisseur's collection, put together by a discriminating eye, knowledge, money, and taste.'' Among the most valuable items is an 1861 block of four triangulars on cover (i.e., on the envelope) from the Cape of Good Hope. Blunders, not beauty, determine value in the stamp world. When a batch of one-penny stamps failed to arrive from England, the settlers asked a local publisher to engrave a set. But he accidentally etched a four-penny stamp among the other three, and today that three-penny error makes the block worth about $400,000.