In 1951, nearly thirty years after Burrus had attempted to claim the stamp for $30,000, the famous collector publicly made a charge that the British Guiana One Cent Magenta was in reality a fake, made up of a four-cent magent which had had the "FOUR" and the "S" at the end of "CENTS" chemically removed and a "ONE" inserted. Mr. Burrus had made these charges privately prior to the 1937 resale of the stamp when it was submitted for expertization to the Royal Philatelic Society. The stamp was examined in every way possible. The opinion of the greatest collegium of experts was that the work of the sort that Burrus suggested could not have been done on this stamp, and that the stamp was and is unquestionably genuine. It seems odd that Burrus would have bid on a stamp that he believed to be a forgery, or that the feisty Belgian would have waited fifteen years after he lost the stamp to first make his claim. To these charges he replied that he bid on the stamp because before the auction he had overheard Hind's agent talking about what a high bid he had on the stamp and, as a tease, he decided to run it up. Then, he said, out of deference to its owner, he decided to make no claim about the stamp's stature until Mr. Hind was dead.
After Hind's death, the British Guiana remained unsold for a period of time. In about 1939 the stamp was sold to Frederick Small, for a sum rumored to be around $50,000. Small was not known to be the owner of the stamp until he sold it in 1970. The British Guiana One Cent Magenta was then purchased for $240,000 by a group of Pennsylvania investors who, like Small, had little interest in philately. They sold it in 1980 for $935,000 (850,000 plus a 10 percent buyer's premium) and currently the new owner is unknown.