Although the stamps were in regular use until as late as 1856, of the four values issued only about 200 have survived (Scott Trepel's census in the Siegel catalog lists 197, but see below), of which 28 are unused, and 32 are on cover.

An astonishing lore surrounds this stamp: in 1892, one of its earlier owners, Gaston Leroux, was murdered for it by an envious fellow philatelist, Hector Giroux.

It was in a bundle of correspondence shoved into a factory furnace around 1870, but packed so tightly that the fire went out (though one side of the cover bears a scorch mark).

[5] The Dawson cover, shown on the 2002 Souvenir Sheet (Scott 3694) may be evidence of the validity of the 1850 Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between the United States and Hawaii[6] as a sovereign nation.

B. Moore to implement the treaty's mail exchange provision quickly, to support Hawaii's sovereignty against any potential French ambitions in the Hawaiian Islands.

They came from a Charles Shattuck, whose mother had apparently corresponded with her childhood friend Ursula Newell Emerson, matriarch of a missionary family in Hawaii, were acquired by George H. Grinnell and then sold to dealer John Klemann for $65,000.

In 1922, experts testified that the Grinnells had been produced by photogravure and not by handset moveable type, but in the 1980s Keith Cordrey contended that they were probably typeset, and the Royal Philatelic Society London agreed.

A book detailing their findings was published in 2006 titled The Investigation of the Grinnell Hawaiian Missionaries by the Expert Committee of the Royal Philatelic Society London by Patrick Pearson.