The Inverted Jenny (also known as an Upside Down Jenny, Jenny Invert) is a 24 cent United States
postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the fa ...
first issued on May 10, 1918, in which the image of the
Curtiss JN-4
The Curtiss JN "Jenny" was a series of biplanes built by the Curtiss Aeroplane Company of Hammondsport, New York, later the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. Although the Curtiss JN series was originally produced as a training aircraft for th ...
airplane
An airplane or aeroplane (informally plane) is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and wing configurations. The broad spe ...
in the center of the design is printed upside-down; it is one of the most famous errors in American
philately
Philately (; ) is the study of postage stamps and postal history. It also refers to the collection and appreciation of stamps and other philatelic products. Philately involves more than just stamp collecting or the study of postage; it is poss ...
. Only one pane of 100 of the
invert stamps was ever found, making this error one of the most prized in philately.
A single Inverted Jenny was sold at a
Robert A. Siegel auction in November 2007 for $977,500.
In December 2007 a
mint never hinged example was sold for $825,000. The broker of the sale said the buyer was a Wall Street executive who had lost the auction the previous month. A block of four Inverted Jennys was sold at a Robert A. Siegel auction in October 2005 for $2.7 million. In the wake of the
2008 financial meltdown, prices fetched by Inverted Jennys receded. Between January and September 2014, five examples offered at auction sold for sums ranging from $126,000 through $575,100. Prices eventually recovered, for on May 31, 2016, a particularly well-centered Jenny invert, graded XF-superb 95 by Professional Stamp Experts, was sold at a Siegel Auction for a
hammer price
In auctions, the buyer's premium is a charge in addition to the hammer price (i.e. the winning bid announced) of an auction item, or lot. The winning bidder is required to pay both the hammer price and the percentage of that price called for by the ...
of $1,175,000 The addition of a 15%
buyer's premium
In auctions, the buyer's premium is a charge in addition to the hammer price (i.e. the winning bid announced) of an auction item, or lot. The winning bidder is required to pay both the hammer price and the percentage of that price called for by the ...
raised the total record high price paid for this copy to $1,351,250. On 15 November 2018, the recently discovered position number 49 stamp was auctioned by Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries for a new record hammer price of $1,350,000, with an 18 percent buyer's premium raising the total cost to US$1,593,000.
Background
During the 1910s, the
United States Post Office
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the ...
had made a number of experimental trials of carrying mail by air. These were shown by the first stamp in the world to picture an airplane (captioned as "aeroplane carrying mail"), one of the
U.S. Parcel Post stamps of 1912–13
The U.S. Parcel Post stamps of 1912–13 were the first such stamps issued by the U.S. Post Office Department and consisted of twelve denominations to pay the postage on parcels weighing 16 ounces and more, with each denomination printed in the sam ...
. The Post Office finally decided to inaugurate regular service on May 15, 1918, flying between
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
,
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
, and
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. The Post Office set a controversial rate of 24 cents for the service, much higher than the 3 cents for first-class mail of the time, and decided to issue a new stamp just for this rate, patriotically printed in red and blue, and depicting a
Curtiss Jenny
The Curtiss JN "Jenny" was a series of biplanes built by the Curtiss Aeroplane Company of Hammondsport, New York, later the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. Although the Curtiss JN series was originally produced as a training aircraft for ...
JN-4HM, the
biplane
A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...
especially modified for shuttling the mail. The stamp's designer,
Clair Aubrey Huston
Clair Aubrey Huston (a.k.a. Charles Aubrey Huston) was chief postage stamp designer at the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) early in the 20th century. He was the great-grandson of Michael Leib (1759–1822), an American physicia ...
, apparently troubled to procure a photograph of that modified model (produced by removing the second pilot seat from the JN-4HT to create space for mailbags, and by increasing the fuel capacity). As only six such aircraft existed, there was a 1-in-6 chance that the very plane engraved on the stamp by Marcus Baldwin—Jenny #38262—would be chosen to launch the inaugural three-city airmail run; the plane on the stamp was indeed the first to depart from Washington on May 15, taking off at 11:47 A. M.
The job of designing and printing the new stamp was carried out in a great rush;
engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ...
began only on May 4, and stamp printing on May 10 (a Friday), in sheets of 100 (contrary to the usual practice of printing 400 at a time and cutting into 100-stamp panes). Since the stamp was printed in two colors, each sheet had to be placed into the
flat-bed printing press twice, an error-prone process that had resulted in invert errors in stamps of
1869 and
1901
Events
January
* January 1 – The Crown colony, British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria (Australia), Victoria and Western Australia Federation of Australia, federate as the Australia, ...
, and at least three misprinted sheets were found during the production process and destroyed. It is believed that only one misprinted sheet of 100 stamps got through unnoticed.
Many collectors long thought the blue plane portion was printed first, thus it was actually the red frames that were inverted. In fact, the frames were printed first and it is the planes that are upside down.
In examples where the plane is so far off center that it overlaps the frames, it can be seen that the blue ink used to print the plane lies atop the red ink used to print the frames. The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum offers two explanations for how this might have occurred: either a sheet of printed frames was placed in the press upside down for the printing of the plane; or the printing plate used to print the planes was mounted inverted within the printing press.
Initial deliveries went to post offices on Monday, May 13. Aware of the potential for inverts, a number of collectors went to their local post offices to buy the new stamps and keep an eye out for errors. Collector William T. Robey was one of those; he had written to a friend on May 10 mentioning that "it would pay to be on the lookout for inverts". On May 14, Robey went to the post office to buy the new stamps, and as he wrote later, when the clerk brought out a sheet of inverts, "my heart stood still".
He paid for the sheet, and asked to see more, but the remainder of the sheets were normal.
The postal clerk who sold the sheet later said he did not realize the image was inverted because he had never seen an airplane before.
Additional details of the day's events are not entirely certain—Robey gave three different accounts later—but he began to contact both stamp dealers and journalists, to tell them of his find. After a week that included visits from
postal inspectors who tried to buy it back,
and the hiding of the sheet under his mattress, Robey sold the sheet to noted Philadelphia dealer
Eugene Klein for $15,000.
Klein placed an advertisement on the first page of the May 25, 1918 ''Mekeel’s Weekly Stamp News'' offering to sell copies of the invert ($250 for fully perforated examples, $175 for stamps with one straight edge), but announced in his following week's ad that the entire sheet had been purchased by an individual collector. The buyer, who paid $20,000, was "Colonel"
Edward Green, son of
Hetty Green
Hetty Green (November 21, 1834 – July 3, 1916), nicknamed the Witch of Wall Street, was an American businesswoman and financier known as "the richest woman in America" during the Gilded Age. She was named by the '' Guinness Book of World Reco ...
.
Klein advised Green that the stamps would be worth more separately than as a single sheet, and Green went along. He donated one invert (which was auctioned off for $300) to the Red Cross in support of its war efforts, while retaining forty-one of the stamps in his own collection, including the plate-number block (initially eight stamps) and several blocks of four.
[Donald Sundman, ''The Jenny Invert Plate-Number Block'' indle Edition Mystic Stamp Company 2012, ASIN: B008MAOPUG] The remainder of the inverts were sold off at steadily increasing prices through Klein, who kept a block of four for himself.
Green had one copy placed in a locket for his wife. This gold and glass locket displayed the inverted Jenny on one side, and a "regular" Jenny stamp on the other. This locket was offered for sale for the first time on May 18, 2002, in the Siegel Auction Galleries Rarity Sale. It did not sell in the auction, but the philatelic press reported that a Private Treaty sale was arranged later for an unknown price.
The philatelic literature has long stated that seven of the stamps have been lost or destroyed through theft or mishandling. However, in 2007 a copy came to light that had not been seen since Eugene Klein broke up the sheet, and was offered for auction that June. Several others have been damaged, including one that was sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Apparently Green's wife mailed one which, while recovered, is the only cancelled sample. Indeed, no Jenny invert is in pristine condition, because Klein lightly penciled a number on the back of each stamp (from 1 through 10 in the top row to 91 through 100 in the bottom row) so that its original position on the sheet could be identified. For many years, only five examples were known to have survived in never-hinged condition.
One of these is the locket copy, which, however has another condition problem: a corner crease at the bottom right probably caused while it was being enclosed behind glass.
[2002 Rarities of the World (Siegel Auction catalogue, Sale 846, May 18, 2002), p. 158.]
A famous stamp
![Benjemin K Miller 2305 xl](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Benjamin_K._Miller.jpg)
Aside from having the biplane printed upside down, the inverted Jenny has become famous for other reasons as well.
Benjamin Kurtz Miller, one of the early buyers of these inverts, 10 in all, bought the stamp for $250. Miller's inverted Jenny, position 18 on the sheet, was stolen in 1977 but was recovered in the early 1980s though, unfortunately, the top perforations had been cut off to prevent it from being recognized as the stolen Miller stamp. This mutilation made the stamp appear as if it had come from the top row of the sheet, and Klein's numbering on the back was accordingly tampered with to disguise the stamp as position 9—an astute piece of misdirection founded in the knowledge that position 9 had never appeared on the market: in fact, the real position 9 emerged decades later as the locket copy.
(A genuine straight-edged copy would have cost Miller only $175.) However, that stolen and missing stamp served to drive the value of the other 99 examples even higher. That inverted Jenny was the main attraction in the Smithsonian
National Postal Museum
The National Postal Museum, located opposite Union Station in Washington, D.C., United States, covers large portions of the Postal history of the United States and other countries. It was established through joint agreement between the United S ...
's 'Rarity Revealed' exhibition, 2007–2009. The "Inverted Jenny" was the most requested postage stamp for viewing by visitors at the museum.
In 2014, the mass media renewed long-dormant public attention to the 1955 theft of an even more spectacular Jenny specimen. This was a block of four (positions 65, 66, 75, 76) with a vertical red guide-line through its center, owned by the collector
Ethel McCoy, which was stolen from a stamp show at a Norfolk hotel where it was being exhibited. The top right stamp from this block has never been found; the two left stamps surfaced in the 1970s as single copies offered in auction catalogues and were recovered by the FBI, although they had been camouflaged by minor mutilation: the portions of the right-edge perforations on which parts of the guide line were originally visible had been trimmed off or abraded to remove the red ink. Mrs. McCoy's will had made the American Philatelic Research Library the legal owner of all four stamps in the block. In 2014 Donald Sundman of the Mystic Stamp Company offered $100,000 in reward money—$50,000 for the two stamps that were still missing—to anyone who could bring them to their rightful owner. The offer was publicized in ''The New York Times''
and on national network news.
In April 2016, a third stamp from the stolen McCoy block turned up for auction at the Spink USA auction house. The seller was a British citizen in his 20s who claimed to have inherited it from his grandfather and knew little about the stamp's provenance. Examination revealed that the stamp came from position 76 in the pane of 100. The American Philatelic Research Library said it will work to take possession of the stamp once an FBI investigation is complete and other legal matters settled. The only stamp that remains missing is position 66.
Philatelic forgers have mutilated at least four additional Inverted Jennys, (positions 4, 5, 6 and 8) disfiguring them with false perforations at the top (these were copies from the first horizontal row of the sheet, all of which originally had a straight edge at the top. The spurious perforations on position 4 have been trimmed away, but traces of them are still discernable along the narrow margin that remains).
[The 1918 24¢ Inverted "Jenny" (Siegel Auction catalogue, Sale 1010A, June 18, 2011, p. 18: photographic reconstruction of the Inverted "Jenny" Sheet ix stamp-images missing]
In 2019, the 31-year-old musician son of "Bond King"
Bill Gross auctioned off a set of five highly valued stamps, including an Inverted Jenny, for a total of $1.9 million, against his father's wishes. His father reportedly claims that he himself gave each of his three kids some priceless "Jennys" seven years earlier, on the condition that his grandchildren ultimately inherit them.
The most recent sale was in March 2020, when a Jenny (position 95) was sold to collector Trevor Fried in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The Jenny invert is so famous in the philatelic community—and the general public as well—that the complete history of all sales has been publicly documented.
A rare swap
![Inverted jenny400](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Inverted_jenny400.jpg)
At an auction of the Green estate in 1944, the unique plate number block of eight stamps was sold for $27,000 to the collector Amos Eno, who had four stamps removed from it. The reduced block fetched only $18,250 when Eno's estate was sold off ten years later. By 1971, however, its price had risen to $150,000.
Eventually, in late October 2005 this plate number block of four stamps was purchased by a then-anonymous buyer for $2,970,000. The purchaser was revealed to be U.S. financier
Bill Gross. Shortly after purchasing the Inverted Jennys he proceeded to trade them with
Donald Sundman, president of the
Mystic Stamp Company
Mystic Stamp Company is an American, employee-owned stamp dealer founded in 1923 by Lawrence K. Shaver (1903 – September 23, 1990). The company is headquartered where it was founded, in Camden, New York. It specializes in the buying and selling ...
, a
stamp dealer
A stamp dealer is a company or an individual who deals in stamps and philatelic products. It also includes individuals who sell postage stamps for day to day use or revenue stamps for use on court documents. Stamp dealers who sell to stamp collect ...
, for one of only two known examples of the USA 1c
Z Grill
The Benjamin Franklin Z Grill, or simply "Z-Grill", is a 1-cent postage stamp issued by the United States Postal Service in February 1868 depicting Benjamin Franklin. While stamps of this design were the common 1-cent stamps of the 1860s, the Z ...
. By completing this trade, Gross became the owner of the only complete collection of U.S. 19th century stamps.
2006 forgery
![Invertedjenny stamp ballot](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Invertedjenny_stamp_ballot.jpg)
In November 2006, election workers in
Broward County, Florida
Broward County ( , ) is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's second-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and the 17th-most populous in the United States, with over 1.94 m ...
, claimed to have found an Inverted Jenny affixed to an
absentee ballot
An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station to which the voter is normally allocated. Methods include voting at a different location, postal voting, proxy voting and online votin ...
envelope. The sender did not include any identification with the ballot, which automatically disqualified the ballot. Peter Mastrangelo, executive director of the
American Philatelic Society
The American Philatelic Society (APS) is the largest nonprofit stamp collecting foundation of philately in the world. Both the membership and interests of the society are worldwide.
History
The organization, originally named the ''American Phil ...
, observed that the stamp was at variance with known copies, due in part to its perforations, although the colors had been reproduced accurately. Further investigations, published in the following month, confirmed that the stamp was a
forgery
Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbidd ...
.
95th anniversary souvenir sheet
On September 22, 2013, the
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
issued a
souvenir sheet
A souvenir sheet or miniature sheet is a postage stamp or a small group of postage stamps still attached to the sheet on which they were printed. They may be either regular issues that just happen to be printed in small groups (typical of many ea ...
illustrating six examples of the inverted stamp denominated $2 instead of the original 24 cents. The sheets were sold at face value, $12 (the issue was sold only as souvenir sheets of six, and not as individual $2 stamps). Various special packagings for collectors were also offered for a premium.
In addition to the 2.2 million sheets printed with the plane inverted, the Postal Service announced it also printed 100 "non-inverted Jenny" souvenir sheets, with the plane flying right side up. All sheets are individually wrapped in sealed envelopes to recreate the excitement of finding an Inverted Jenny when opening the envelope and to avoid the possibility of discovering a corrected Jenny prior to purchase. Individuals purchasing one of the 100 non-inverted Jenny sheets find a congratulatory note inside the wrapping asking them to call a phone number to receive a certificate of acknowledgement signed by
Postmaster General
A Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. The practice of having a government official respons ...
Patrick Donahoe
Patrick Donahoe (born Munnery, County Cavan, Ireland, 17 March 1811; died Boston, U.S.A., 18 March 1901) was a publisher who founded influential magazines for the Irish Catholic community in his adopted country.
Early life
Patrick Donahoe was bor ...
. A non-inverted sheet purchased by Gail and David Robinson of Richmond, Virginia, was sold in June 2014 by Siegel Auctions "Rarities of the World" for $51,750, with the 15% buyer's premium.
In 2015 the Postal Service's
Inspector General
An inspector general is an investigative official in a civil or military organization. The plural of the term is "inspectors general".
Australia
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (Australia) (IGIS) is an independent statutory off ...
called the issuing of a few right side up Jenny airmail sheets improper because regulations do not allow the deliberate creation and distribution of stamp errors. The Service's general counsel was aware of the plan but formal approval by the legal department did not occur. It was also found that the Service's stamp fulfillment center in
Missouri
Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...
had accidentally failed to distribute 23 of the 30 sheets it was supposed to randomly mix in with orders (the other 70 went to local post offices). Thus not even the promised 100 were made available to the public.
StampWants giveaway
As covered in ''Linn's Stamp News'', on January 12, 2008, StampWants.com (an online marketplace for stamps, now known as bidStart.com) gave away an inverted Jenny, after a year-long promotion the company ran. This represented the most expensive stamp ever given away in any sort of promotion. The winner of the giveaway was John Shedlock, of California, and the stamp was presented to him by the then-current Miss New Jersey,
Amy Polumbo
Amy Polumbo (born November 20, 1984) was crowned Miss New Jersey 2007. She is from Howell Township, New Jersey, where she graduated from Howell High School in 2003. She graduated from Wagner College, where she studied musical theatre and psychol ...
.
Position 49 stamp located after missing for 100 years
On September 6, 2018, ''The New York Times'' reported that the Philatelic Foundation had authenticated an inverted Jenny stamp that had not been seen since the original sheet of 100 was divided in 1918. It is a sixth never-hinged copy, the long-missing Jenny at position No. 49.
On 15 November 2018, the stamp was auctioned by
Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries for the then-record sum of US$1,593,000 (including the 18 percent buyer's premium).
In popular culture
The Inverted Jenny appeared in several TV shows and films, including ''
Brewster's Millions'', the episode "
Homer's Barbershop Quartet
"Homer's Barbershop Quartet" is the first episode of the fifth season of the American animated television series ''The Simpsons''. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on September 30, 1993. It features the Be Sharps, a ...
" of the animated TV series ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, ...
'', and the episode "One Big Happy Family" of the legal drama ''
For the People''.
See also
*
Airmails of the United States
United States airmail was a service class of the United States Post Office Department (USPOD) and its successor United States Postal Service (USPS) delivering air mail by aircraft flown within the United States and its possessions and territor ...
*
List of United States airmail stamps
Domestic U.S. Air Mail was established as a new class of mail service by the United States Post Office Department (POD) on May 15, 1918, with the inauguration of the Washington–Philadelphia–New York route. Special postage stamps were ...
*
CIA invert
The CIA invert is a one-dollar value postage stamp error issued by the United States Postal Service. It is one stamp from the Americana series that were produced between 1975 and 1981. The $1 colonial rushlight holder stamp was first issued on J ...
*
Invert error
In philately, an invert error occurs when part of a stamp is printed upside-down. Inverts are perhaps the most spectacular of postage stamp errors, not only because of their striking visual appearance, but because some are quite rare, and highly ...
*
List of notable postage stamps
This is a list of postage stamps that are especially notable in some way, often due to antiquity or a postage stamp error. Among the best-known stamps are:
* Penny Black (Great Britain)
* Treskilling Yellow (Sweden)
* Bull's Eye (Brazil)
* Briti ...
*
Philatelic investment
Philatelic investment is investment in collectible postage stamps for the purpose of realizing a profit. Philatelic investment was popular during the 1970s but then fell out of favour following a speculative bubble and prices of rare stamps took m ...
*
Stamp collecting
Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects. It is an area of philately, which is the study (or combined study and collection) of stamps. It has been one of the world's most popular hobbies since the late nineteenth ...
*
Pan-American invert
As part of the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo in 1901 the United States Post Office Department issued a series of six commemorative stamps. Each stamp featured an ornate colored frame enclosing a black-and-white image of some means of ( ...
References
Further reading
* Amick, George. ''The Inverted Jenny: Mystery, Money, Mania''. Scott Pub Inc Co (May 1, 1987).
* Roy, Ron. ''The Empty Envelope''. Random House Children's Books, 2000.
External links
Topic-specific website{{Postage stamps of the United States
Postage stamps of the United States
Curtiss-Wright Company
Airmail stamps
1918 works
1918 in the United States
Postage stamp invert errors