Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/08/infamous-inverted-jenny-st.html
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Neat. To my nerd cred, collected stamps. Hope to get back into it some day.
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I wonder if anyone at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is ever tempted to make a “mistake” so they can keep a sheet for their retirement nest egg?
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OH yeah, in the 30s the postmaster general got into some trouble. He gave out some sheets of uncut/unperforated (imperforate) of the National Parks series stamps with no glue to people for gifts. And this lead to a bunch of souvenir sheets being printed and I think even releasing imperforate sheets to the public to counter the rarity.
Let me see if I can find an article.
FYI that series is gorgeous. I love old school engraving on stamps.
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Why not start with this one? 
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Yes. I lost interest in stamps after they swiched to halftone printing.
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You got a trust fund or something to help me out with?
Neat thing about it, is there are still thousands of old samples to get. Once you get most of the US ones, there are tons of cool foreign ones. I even have a couple stamps I can’t find in the Scotts Catalog. They are from Chile and on a special security paper. It is possible I am just looking in the wrong place, but they are really weird.
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Nobody has ever trusted me enough to fund me.
While I really appreciate the artistry that goes into stamps, I could never get the hang of the “collection” side of the hobby. I also suck at Pokémon. “Gotta Catch Three or So!”
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(I can’t remember my own phone number sometimes but I can stil recall obscure movie references like magic. Go figure)
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Hah! I was thinking of Heart and Souls, when a young Tony Stark stole that kid’s stamp collection.
I can’t find the scene, but here’s the trailer:
Sometimes, when we’re feeling a little philatelic, my gf and I like to do the Inverted Jenny.
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Thank you!
Made my day, this has.
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Yeah, same here. Thanks, @AndreaJames for posting this (get it? ha!).
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That’s an interesting story there. My dad is a philatelist, and used to run a small home business dealing pre-1950’s worldwide stamps, so the Jenny’s were always regarded with a kind of near-mythic splendor. He never possessed one of them upside-down-airplane stamps, but corresponded with a collector who did. He did however at one time have a notable collection of the Penny Black, which was the world’s first adhesive postage stamp.
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A harsh but necessary lesson-philately will get you nowhere.
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I was big into philately as a nerdy youth. Reading this story and learning the unfortunate fate of some of these legendary stamps just makes me cringe.
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Sometimes they just say “screw it” and go with the mistake to reduce scarcity.
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Though the decision to make similar sheets available to the public reduced their value, many stamp collectors never forgave Farley.
Much like the AARP, you don’t ever want to piss off the collector community.
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Frankly, I wish you’d check your mail privilege.
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