![]() ![]() ![]() Robey, who walked up to a window of a Washington, D.C., post office on the morning of May 14 to see if any more airmail stamps had come in since the previous day. Even in 1918, stamp collecting was a popular pastime of the idle rich, and rumors of the airmail stamp’s tight deadline, as well as its two-color design, had piqued the interest of collectors, who were hoping for an error caused by its hasty release and multiple plates. In fact, some collectors were counting on that, or something very much like it. It’s likely the stamp’s inversion occurred when a harried worker at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had incorrectly fed an inked 24-cent frame sheet into the hand-operated spider press (so named for its spider-like, spoked wheel). ![]() airmail stamp, rushed into production during the week of May 6, 1918, so it would be ready for sale on the 13th, in time for the first airmail deliveries via specially modified Curtiss airplanes on May 15. Above: Visitors to the Gross Stamp Gallery will be able to see a block of four Inverted Jennys. Top: A 1918 Inverted Jenny (left) and its 2013 “re-issue” (right). Postal Service is releasing a new version of the Inverted Jenny as a $2 stamp in a variety of formats, from a First Day Cover for $2.44 to a limited-edition boxed collector’s set that includes a 48-page book on the stamp, color proofs, and sheets of cancelled and mint stamps for $200 (pre-orders for all versions begin on September 20 at a ceremony for the $2 Inverted Jenny takes place at the Gross Stamp Gallery at 1 p.m. The gallery has been in the works since the fall of 2009, when Gross, who made his billions (yes, plural…) as the founder of the Pimco Total Return bond fund, donated $8 million to the National Postal Museum.Īmong the 20,000-plus items on display in the 12,000-square-foot space is a block of four 24-cent Inverted Jenny stamps, so named because the blue intaglio vignette of a Curtiss JN-4-H biplane (commonly called a Jenny) in the 1918 stamp was printed upside down in relation to its carmine-colored frame.Īs a tie-in to the Gross Stamp Gallery’s opening-day festivities, the U.S. Gross Stamp Gallery at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum opens to the public. This weekend, on Sunday, September 22, 2013, the William H. ![]()
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