{"id":3757,"date":"2005-10-20T11:00:24","date_gmt":"2005-10-20T15:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3757"},"modified":"2022-10-09T20:13:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T00:13:39","slug":"the-inverted-jenny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3757","title":{"rendered":"The “inverted Jenny”"},"content":{"rendered":"

See those stamps right there? With the upside down airplane? They just were auctioned off for almost 3 million dollars. Reeeeealllly cool story behind the stamps right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 1918 stamp, known to collectors as the Jenny because of the Curtiss JN-4 biplane depicted in the design, was the first American issue for air postage. Its value was set at 24 cents.<\/p>\n

But of roughly two million printed, 100 bore the topsy-turvy center plane and became known as the Inverted Jenny. They quickly became the stuff of philatelic legend. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More of the story of its increasing value:<\/p>\n

A single sheet of 100 with the centers eye-catchingly inverted was sold at a Washington post office in 1918 to a sharp-eyed collector, who quickly resold the entire sheet to a dealer for $15,000. Within a few weeks, the stamps were separated, with most sold off individually for a few hundred dollars each. A few blocks of four were preserved, including the unique block auctioned yesterday, which shows part of the blue printing plate number inverted in the bottom margin. The so-called plate block changed hands in 1954 for $18,250 and was sold again privately in 1971 for an undisclosed sum. In 1989, Christie’s auctioned it for $1.1 million. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know all of this is insane, they’re “just stamps” – but to my mind, that is a completely boring argument. Make it if you like, but just know that you’re kind of boring. I stand proudly with the obsessive FREAKS of the world who give a shite about weird things like inverted Jennys. I am not a stamp person, by any means – I know nothing about stamps … I just love people who are NUTS about random things like this.<\/p>\n

I also love the pioneer spirit behind the design of that original stamp – meant to invoke the amazing beginning of airmail service (captured to romantic perfection in what has to be one of my favorite movies ever made: Only Angels Have Wings<\/a><\/i>. Now there’s a movie where I just yearn to crawl through the television screen <\/a>and join that world.)<\/p>\n

I look at the “inverted Jenny” there on the stamp, and I think of that movie, and the dangerous (yet romantic) frontier world it depicted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See those stamps right there? With the upside down airplane? They just were auctioned off for almost 3 million dollars. Reeeeealllly cool story behind the stamps right here. The 1918 stamp, known to collectors as the Jenny because of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178728,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3757\/revisions\/178728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}