Upside Down Airmail!

The most famous of all US stamps is the "Inverted Jenny" - the 1918 24 cent airmail stamp with inverted vignette. As "errors," these stamps immediately attained collectible status. Their notoriety - and value - continue to soar, with average quality examples fetching 6 figure prices in auction.    Commissioned for America's first airmail run, the stamp bears the image of a Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplane, the military training plane chosen for the historic flight. The two-color design required two print runs which introduced the chance for inversion errors. Usually, these errors were caught in production and destroyed; however, a single sheet of 100 Inverted Jenny's escaped notice, got delivered to a Washington D.C. post office and was sold.    The intact sheet changed hands twice (despite the Post Office's attempt to recover it) and then was broken up into blocks and singles and sold as pieces. Since then, each piece of this historic sheet, whether used as postage, sealed in a locket, stolen from an exhibition or accidentally sucked up into a vacuum cleaner, has produced its own unique story.    Jay Parrino's The Mint is pleased to offer not just any Inverted Jenny, but what we consider to be the finest single stamp from that original sheet of 100. From position #68, it is the best never-hinged example ever to be graded, and a true philatelic treasure.