Portal:Philately/Stamp of the month archive/9

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Inverted Jenny was a postage stamp, issued by the United States on May 10, 1918. The image of a Curtiss JN-4 airplane in the center of the design was accidentally printed upside-down. One sheet, of 100 stamps, was found at a post office and bought by a collector just four days after issue on May 14 and sold soon afterwards for US$15,000.

Because the stamp was printed in two colors, each sheet had to be fed through the printing press twice, a process that resulted in the invert error. Several misprinted sheets were found during the production process and destroyed. This error is one of the most prized in all philately; as of 2003, an inverted Jenny would typically sell for around US$150,000.