A 1918 Stamp With an Upside-Down Airplane Just Sold for More Than $2 Million

Tori Latham
·2 min read
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A first-class stamp for a standard-size, rectangular envelope costs just 66 cents. But if you want a stamp that’s really something special, you’d better be willing to shell out the big bucks.

One of the rarest stamps in the world just sold for more than $2 million, The Washington Post reported on Monday. The “Inverted Jenny”—whose name comes from the fact that the airplane depicted was misprinted upside down—was auctioned off by Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries and bought by the collector Charles Hack, who had long been coveting this specific example.

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“It’s the very best item of the most well-known American icon in philately,” Hack told the Post. “And it’s a bit of American history.”

The stamp was printed all the way back in 1918, to commemorate the beginning of regular airmail service, The Washington Post noted. With printers in a rush to get the stamps out in time for the inaugural flight, they misprinted several with the Curtiss “Jenny” biplane in the wrong direction. While most of the erroneous stamps were taken out of circulation, a sheet of 100 was sold to the public.

Over the years, Inverted Jennys have shown up on the auction block, taking their name from their original position in that sheet of 100. For example, Hack spent $1 million on “Position 57” in 2007, after buying his first Inverted Jenny earlier in the aughts for a more modest $300,000. While most of the original 100 were identified in the century following their release, “Position 49” was missing all the way up until 2018. When it came to light, it was perhaps the best Inverted Jenny of all, because it had been stored away in a safe-deposit box since it was initially sold, leaving it untouched and unexposed to light.

“The colors in the paper are just beautiful and fresh,” Scott Trepel, the president of Robert A. Siegel, told the Post. “There’s nothing better.”

When “Position 49” went up for sale in 2018, Hack pounced on the opportunity, but his losing bid was $50,000 short of the $1.6 million winning price tag. Now, though, he made sure that he came in first, and that he went home with the most storied Inverted Jenny of all.

Just like the stamp’s original owner, Hack plans to keep it in a safe to protect it from light, only bringing it out when interested friends or family want to take a peek. The knowledge that he’s now the rightful owner of “Position 49” may be more important than displaying it for all to see.

“This is the premium copy,” Hack said. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

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