The Inverted Jenny Plate Block is considered by many to be the most valuable and important showpiece in United States philately. Its four blue upside-down Curtiss JN4-H biplanes immediately identify it but it is the similarly inverted fifth invert, the blue 8493 plate number, that makes this block unique.

The 1918 24-Cent Carmine Rose and Blue was printed with a sole purpose, to provide a single-stamp means of transporting a letter between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York City by air. The brand new Aerial Mail service was due to begin on May 15, 1918, and the printing of the needed stamps had only begun five days before at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington. With two days to spare, the stamps appeared at a few Post Office counters in the capital.

The following day, on May 14th, an unwitting postal clerk handed over a sheet of one hundred stamps to an unassuming twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker’s clerk named William Robey. The clerk never looked at the sheet and when questioned later replied “how was I to know the thing was upside down? I never saw a plane before.”

Perhaps never in the world of collecting has an object achieved such a meteoric rise in fame... and value. Within a week the sheet traveled, ironically as intended, from $24 in Washington to $20,000 in New York, via a $15,000 stop in Philadelphia.

They would never be affixed to an envelope, be postmarked, or see the inside of an aircraft. Instead they became the property of one Colonel Edward “Ned” Green, the immensely wealthy son of Hetty Green, the miserly “Witch of Wall Street.” Green had the sheet broken up but kept all the important blocks, including the then Plate Block of eight. Following his death, this block alone sold for $27,000 in 1944. When it reappeared ten years later it had been separated from the somewhat defective four stamps at left to become the block known today.

After gracing the pages of several superlative collections and making fleeting appearances at a few national stamp shows it returned to auction in 1989 where it sold for a phenomenal $1.1 million as part of the legendary Weill Brothers stock. Then again the block disappeared, this time for sixteen years, until 2005 when it passed, albeit briefly, into the hands of well-known financial guru William Gross for a fraction under $3 million dollars, a record for United States stamps.

In a bizarre twist the block was then traded for the one stamp Mr. Gross needed to complete his United States Collection. The new owner, Donald Sundman of Mystic Stamp Company, used the famous block as the centerpiece of his firm’s advertisements for many years before selling it privately to Mr. Weitzman in 2014.

The fascination for this superb block and its ninety-six original companions has never diminished. Appearances in books, films, and television are numerous. Lesser blocks and even choice single copies have now soared passed the million-dollar mark and have continued to rise. Whether it is the patriotic red, white, and blue, or the imagining of the daredevil aerobatics of the early “barnstormers,” it is impossible to say. The Jenny, like the airplane, has become an indelible part of our culture.

The United States was neither the first country to issue an airmail stamp nor the second. Those honors belonged to Italy in May 1917, and Austria in March 1918. In each case a regular stamp was used and a special overprint was created to define its purpose. America did, however, own the title as the first country to depict a plane on a stamp. In 1912 the Post Office created the Parcel Post for packages weighing in excess of a pound. The set of twelve stamps were divided into three categories: The first four, 1-cent to 4-cent showed various postal workers; the second 5-cent to 20-cent, transport of the mail; and the last 25-cent to $1 mostly rural industries expected to use the new service. The transport stamps were a steam locomotive 5-cent, a steamship 10-cent, an automobile 15-cent, and finally an early biplane representing the 20-cent denomination. Not only were all the stamps printed in carmine red, the frame color of the 1918 24-Cent Inverted Jenny, but all were the work of designer Clair Aubrey Houston, and all were also somewhat prophetic. The first three reflected the same three modes of transport found inverted on the 1901 Pan American issue, and the fourth was destined to become the next.

The choice of an airplane as a means of transport for parcels was somewhat strange for 1912 even though the Post Office was known to be interested in plans for flying the mail. Air pioneer Earle Ovington had become the first U.S. Air Mail pilot the previous September when he carried, then literally dropped, nearly 2,000 pieces of mail following a brief five-and-a-half mile flight over Long Island. Other demonstration flights took place and there was even a small showing of support from Congress to study the practicality of airmail; however, even the most ardent supporter considered shipping parcels, or freight, by air an improbable, if not impossible dream.

Ironically, the outbreak of war in 1914 proved to be the catalyst necessary to get the fledgling service off the ground. The war not only hastened the development of the airplane, it also created a manufacturing industry, a supply of a (somewhat) trained group of pilots, and, through news reports of the war, the public appreciation of the capabilities of aircraft.

There are many errors in the world of stamp collecting. In fact every facet of production can, and almost invariably has, gone awry. Designs have been inaccurate, denominations have been incorrectly inserted, and inks have been omitted, misprinted, overprinted, doubly and even trebly printed. Stamps have been mis-perforated in almost every conceivable way or simply not at all. It is however, the inverted center that is the most celebrated of them all, and the most famous of these is the United States 1918 24-Cent Airmail stamps known the world over as simply the Jenny.

The United States was a little behind the rest of the world when it issued its first bicolored postage stamps in 1869. Switzerland’s blue and red Basel “dove” dated back to 1845 and several countries had experimented with the idea over the years. Unknown at the time both India (1854) and Western Australia (1855) had already created inverts although these errors would not be discovered until 1873 and 1892, respectively.

The United States 1869 Issue comprised eleven values: 1-cent, 2-cent, 3-cent, 6-cent, 10-cent, and 12-cent were printed in single colors; and the four high values were bicolored: 15-cent brown and blue, types I and II, 24-cent green and violet, 30-cent ultramarine and carmine, and 90-cent carmine and black. The 15-cent vignette depicted the Landing of Columbus and came with two easily distinguishable frame types, with the first being notably scarcer than the second. Legend has it that the first frame type is the subject of a curiously well-detailed story: In early spring in 1869, stamp dealer David H. Anthony of Lower Manhattan purchased a sheet of one hundred of the new 15-cent stamps. Upon examination he discovered the centers were inverted and so he returned to the post office on March 25 and exchanged the defective stamps. It was noted that he supposedly did sell a single example to a collector who, along with the stamp, has never been traced. The story sounds almost unbelievable except for the undoubted fact that this was not the only time inverted stamps of 1869 were returned to the post office, by the public and stamp collectors alike. The type II with three recorded unused copies is the scarcest invert in mint condition.

The only known copy with its original gum has an interesting history. It was originally purchased by Paul Liechtenstein, a budding collector, as part of a block of twenty-five for his employer. The young man then returned the defective block to the post office save for the single copy that he saved for himself, paying for that one with his lunch money. Incidentally his son, Alfred F. Liechtenstein, would grow up to become one of the all-time great American philatelists.

The second bicolor stamp of the 1869 issue fared little better than the first. The 24-Cent Green and Violet depicting the Signing of the Declaration of Independence was similar in many ways to the 15-cent in terms of design. Neither was particularly attractive nor did they receive any real public acclaim when they were issued. Inverts have survived; even so, less than a handful remain unused. The survival rate of both the 15-cent and 24-cent inverts in used condition is far better, with more than 100 of the 15-cent surviving, over a dozen more than the comparatively rarer 24-cent value.

The final stamp of the 1869 issue known to have produced an invert was the 30-Cent Shield, Eagle and Flags stamp in ultramarine blue and carmine. In the case of this invert it is the surrounding blue flags that are affected rather than the central eagle and shield. This error, unlike the 15-cent and 24-cent errors, is not immediately obvious unless compared with a normal example: the flags simply appear to be draped over the eagle’s wings and the THIRTY CENTS denomination is actually easier to read. This may well explain why this particular invert was not widely reported until 1876. It is the most common unused invert with at least seven known, but it is the scarcest in terms of used copies, with less than fifty recorded.

There can be little doubt that many of the used inverts from the 1869 issue owe their survival to their use on envelopes on mail abroad, or on the heavier weighted envelopes used in legal and commercial business which had a greater tendency to be saved. By the end of April 1870, the whole issue had been replaced and bicolored postage stamps would not reappear for more than thirty years.

At a cost of over $20 for both, the first two Commemorative stamp issues, the 1-cent–$5 1893 Columbian and the 1-cent–$2 1898 Trans-Mississippi sets sold poorly. The proposed 1–10-cent six-value set for the upcoming 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, was welcomed by collectors and the general public alike.

The theme of the stamps was "new technology for a new century" and for the first time since 1869 the stamps were to be bicolored, an idea toyed with for the previous 1898 issue but eventually abandoned. All six denominations featured black vignettes within colored frames. The stamps were placed on sale from May 1, 1901, through the six-month duration of the exposition, and sales were brisk.

In a relatively short space of time it became apparent that at least two of the denominations, the 1-cent and 2-cent, had been sold with inverted centers, or perhaps more correctly, inverted frames. The more common 1-cent was discovered in several post offices around the country, leading to the conclusion that several sheets of two hundred had been printed and dispersed. Numerous unused blocks exist, including one of twenty stamps and many singles; used copies include at least one pair and several on cover. In total probably more than two hundred survive.

The 2-cent is a rare stamp especially used or as a mint multiple. There are seven recorded used copies and all have faults. There are only two blocks of four of which one is rejoined, and all told there are probably only 80 or so copies.

The 4-cent, the third invert in the series, was deliberately created by the Post Office, specifically on the orders of Third Assistant Post Master General Edwin Madden. At least two sheets were printed, producing 400 copies of which 197 were destroyed. The remaining stamps, some overprinted "specimen" were distributed: 106 in 1901 and 97 in 1915-16. All have disturbed gum and are regarded as special printings rather than issued stamps.

An interesting indicator of the speed with which these stamps found there way into collections is a report of the San Francisco Stamp Exhibition of September 1901. The Grand Diploma of Honor was presented to Henry Crocker for his 30-volume collection of worldwide stamps. Among the top 200 rarities described are a complete set of 1869 inverts, a 1901 2-cent inverted train, an unused strip of three, and a 4-cent Automobile, inverted, without “Specimen.”

Values increased as well. In 1917 a complete set of unused 1869 inverts came to market as part of the George H. Worthington collection. The 15-cent "Liechtenstein" copy with original gum sold for $4,100, the 24-cent, no gum, one of the four known, realized $2,850, and the 30-cent, the only copy with original gum, fetched $3,550. The 1918 retail prices for the 1901 Pan-American inverts in mint condition were $50 for the 1-cent, $550 2-cent, and $110 for the 4-cent.

Thus, in the thirty-two years since the seemingly unwanted appearance of the first ‘defective’ stamps of 1869, the public in general, and philatelists in particular, had fully realized the significance and value of these magnificent mistakes.

As has been stated, the Post Office Department had long sought the implementation of aircraft as a means of delivering the mail. Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock (1909-1913) had requested, unsuccessfully, an appropriation of funds as early as 1912 for the purpose of establishing an experimental airmail route. His successor, Albert Sidney Burleson (1913-1921) pursued the idea in successive years until finally in 1916 funds were made available for the purchase of aircraft.

Unfortunately the state of the aviation industry and the looming threat of war made the procurement of such machines impossible and the plans were shelved. Undeterred the Post Office Department advertised for bids for the establishment of an air-service route in Massachusetts and several in Alaska. They received only one speculative response that was hastily dismissed.

The following year brought better results. Postmaster General Burleson and his Second Assistant PMG Otto Praeger successfully lobbied new Tennessee Senator Kenneth McKellar to propose an amendment to the Post Office Appropriation Bill for 1918. McKellar, a member of the Senate Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, created a provision for $100,000 “for the purchase, operation, and maintenance of aeroplanes for an experimental aeroplane service.” The measure was debated, passed, and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in March 1917.

Despite the close ties between the tall patrician Texan Burleson and the President, a relationship that had already allowed the abhorrent reintroduction of segregation into the Post Office, there seemed little chance of obtaining the necessary aircraft to begin the service. In early 1918 the country was at war and despite hundreds of millions of dollars being spent, the few airplanes being produced were going straight to the army. A solution arrived when the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a forerunner of NASA, suggested to the War Department that the Army “volunteer” the pilots and planes for the experiment so as to give them experience of cross-country navigation. On February 27th 1918 PMG Burleson announced that on April 15th the experimental aerial mail service would begin with six-day-a-week delivery between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, a distance of a little under 220 miles. By mid-March the start date had been pushed back until May 15, because of trouble in finding landing fields in New York and Philadelphia.

On March 1, Second Assistant Postmaster General Praeger completed the agreement with the Army Signal Corps for the use of its pilots. Orders were then dispatched to the Equipment Division for the supply of twelve Curtiss airplanes, the first six being the JN-4H two-seater trainer model with the 150-horsepower (H)ispano-Suiza engine. The little plane was the aircraft almost all U.S. pilots had first learned to fly and was already known throughout the aeronautical world as the “Jenny.” The man tasked by the War Department to head the Aerial Mail was Major Reuben Fleet. As Officer in Charge, Fleet was chief trainer for the Signal Corps at the time. Also selected was Captain Benjamin Lipsner, who, though not a pilot, was a specialist with a flair for organization and logistics.

Although records show that these appointments took place on or after May 3, 1918, as a matter of fact Major Fleet was writing to Second Assistant Postmaster Otto Praeger on April 30 confirming the aircraft had been built and were to be shipped to Long Island for assembly. A memo from Captain Roy M. Jones of the Equipment Division to Fleet nine days later (May 8) specified the last of the planes would ship from the Curtiss plant in Buffalo the following Sunday night (May 12). The long delay was probably due to specific changes that Curtiss had to make in order for the planes to carry the mail. These included doubling the fuel and oil capacity and turning the two-seater into a single-seater with the forward position being converted into a hopper with a cowling for storing up to 150 pounds of mail.

The six “ships” were designated with the following serial numbers: 37944 (likely a regular JN-4H from the initial order of March 1, hence the early number.); 38262

(the serial number that appears on the postage stamp and likely the prototype for the modifications required. At the Buffalo factory the planes were assembled, test flown, then disassembled and crated for shipment.); 38274, 38275, 38276, and 38278 (the four finished modified aircraft. Due to the urgent need for delivery and the problems encountered thereafter, it is possible these were crated and shipped without being fully assembled and tested).

It was supposed to be Major Fleet and the Signal Corps’ task to select the six needed pilots. After all, pilot training was the reason the army had volunteered its services. As it turned out Fleet only selected four men: First Lieutenant Torrey H. Webb, First Lieutenant Howard P Culver, Second Lieutenant Stephen Bonsal Jr., and Second Lieutenant Walter Miller.

The fifth and sixth choices, Second Lieutenant George LeRoy Boyle and Second Lieutenant James C Edgerton, were requested by the Post Office Department. It so happened that Boyle was engaged to the daughter of Charles McChord, the Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission and a person of great import to the Post Office. Edgerton was the son of the Department’s Purchasing Agent. Both were fresh out of flying school.

And it was Boyle who was left in Washington when Major Fleet traveled by train with the other pilots up to Hazelton Army Base in Mineola, Long Island, on the morning of Monday, May 13, to help assemble the crated modified Jennies waiting there. Upon arrival, Fleet and the five pilots joined the mechanics already at work. By afternoon the next day, two of the planes were considered airworthy, but only just. At a little past 4 P.M. James Edgerton and Howard Culver flew Jennies 38274 and 38262, respectively, out of Hazelton Army Base a few miles west to Belmont Park, almost retracing the path flown by Earl Ovington’s first mail flight six years previously. Following on in a basic JN-4H was Major Fleet. From Belmont Park the three left Long Island and made their way to Bustleton Field in Philadelphia. Although they took off in thick fog, Edgerton and Culver made the trip successfully. But trip was not without incident: Fleet ran out of fuel twice, the plane finally arriving in the dark at the cost of a broken wheel and a propeller.

As dawn broke on Wednesday May 15, 1918, pilots and mechanics were scrambling to fix and repair planes in both Philadelphia and New York. Nevertheless at 8:40 A.M. Major Reuben Fleet lifted off in Jenny 38262 en route to the Polo Fields by the National Mall in the nation’s capital. By 11:30 A.M. the required airplanes were stationed at Washington, New York, and Philadelphia and the Aerial Mail was ready to begin.

Crowds gathered in New York and in Washington. President and Mrs. Wilson joined Postmaster General Burleson, Second Assistant Postmaster Praeger, and assorted dignitaries including a young, and still able-bodied Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Photographs were taken, souvenir watches were presented to the pilots, and with much fanfare the mail arrived and was loaded onto the plane. Lieutenant Boyle waved goodbye to his fiancé, Miss McChord, and climbed the aircraft. And then . . . Nothing.

Fleet and Lipsner ran to the plane to try to help, while Woodrow Wilson was reputed to have complained “we are wasting a lot of valuable time here.” Finally someone decided to check the fuel tanks: they were empty. Gas was hastily siphoned from neighboring planes and finally the engine started. Boyle taxied away and took off into the blue Washington sky, only fifteen minutes late . . . and traveling the wrong way.

Lieutenant Boyle crash-landed unscathed twenty miles south of Washington, in an ironic twist leaving Jenny 38262 upside down (or should we say inverted) in a field. He would make one more flight with the aerial mail, and get lost again, before being replaced. Torrey Webb left New York on time, arrived in Philadelphia two hours later where James Edgerton loaded the mail and proceeded to Washington without incident. Edgerton would go on to have a long and successful career. It would not be until May 18 that a completely incident-free delivery was completed between the three cities, yet on May 16 the press has already pronounced the new Aerial Mail an unqualified success.

The army flew the mail for a further three months until August 12 when the Post Office took over the entire operation. Mail has been flown by air ever since.

The fixing of the postal rate for the new airmail service at 24 cents necessitated the production of a brand-new postage stamp. The reason for the rate is not definitively known, though it is a matter of record that the airmail cost should include the prevailing 10-cent special-delivery fee. One discounted story is that Major Reuben Fleet had made the recommendation; however the way he explained the story in 1968 seems more plausible, albeit tinged with a certain amount of self-promotion.

The Post Office Department asked how much postage it should charge. I enquired if the idea was to make the Aerial Mail self-supporting and if there was a limit. Mr. Praeger [Second Assistant Post Master General] said, “We want it to stand on its own two feet; our limit is 24 cents,” which I then recommended.

Whatever the origination, the price was eight times the normal postal rate of the time and it attracted more than a little criticism for a service that undercut the regular mail by a mere two hours between Washington and New York.

As late as April 25, there was no official word on the creation of a new stamp even though it would have taken at least two of the stamps available at the time, or three with the 10c Special Delivery issue, for every piece of flown mail. This would change in very short order since by May 6, when the Senate approved the bill for the new rate, the production of a new stamp was well underway.

The first airmail stamp was to be produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, and the man chosen to create the image was Clair Aubrey Huston (1857-1938), an established and accomplished artist and designer already responsible for the 1912 20-cent Parcel Post issue, the first stamp depicting an airplane. His design, for which he relied on a War Department photograph of the Curtiss JN-4H two-seater trainer, was to be printed using the line engraved or intaglio printing method. This required the engraving of the design on steel, which would then be hardened and copied onto the printing plate by means of a transfer roller. Most important, it had been decided that the new stamp was to be bicolored with a carmine rose frame and blue center; this would require the engraving of two separate designs and two separate plates.

Edward Mitchell Weeks (1866-1959) was chosen to engrave the frame of the stamp. At age 51 he was already a veteran and would go on to become a Superintendent of the Bureau, receiving no fewer than three Presidential exemptions from mandatory retirement in order to finish his engraving of the 1939 copy of the Declaration of Independence, a monumental task which took over 1,300 hours of his time. Weeks began work on May 4 on die “663” and finished five days later.

More is known of the production of the central vignette. The engraver was Marcus Wickliffe Baldwin (1853-1925), a second-generation engraver whose nearly fifty-year career to this point included spells at both the National and American Banknote companies. One of the first stamp engravers at the Bureau, his earliest work of note was the 1898 $1 Trans-Mississippi “Western Cattle in a Storm,” generally regarding as the most beautiful stamp ever produced by the United States Post Office. Baldwin’s diary records a ten-hour day on the “Aviation” stamp on May 8 followed by a full day on May 9. A second note explains that “Mr. Weeks did the lettering."

The “lettering” almost certainly alludes to the plane’s registration number 38262 located on the fuselage, which was the final addition to the engraving. We know this because at least three die proofs were taken on May 9, one in blue with a black center, one in blue with a red center, and one in red with a blue center as issued. Likely this was so the final choice of color could be approved. None of these three bears the registration number, the exact number that six days later would emblazon the side of the first airplane to take off from Washington.

It has been speculated that the numbering of the plane on the stamp matched that of the plane that made the first flight by sheer coincidence: the numbers of the six aircrafts designated for the service were known, giving the designer a simple one in six chance of getting it right. The fact is that the six crated Jenny JN-4HMs were to be shipped at midnight on Sunday, May 12, per a May 8 memo to Major Fleet. This notice would have specified the numbers of the planes and these numbers would have been reported, by Major Fleet, to Second Assistant Postmaster General Otto Praeger. Praeger in turn would have then advised the engraver Weeks. Fleet then oversaw the assembly of these aircraft before selecting the particular one of the six and personally flying it to Washington for the inauguration of the service.

To the credit of the Post Office they did not get caught up in bureaucracy. Production of the stamp began before the proposed rate had been approved by the Senate, and far before it was signed into law by the President on May 10. Postmaster General Burleson even approved the final design a week after the service commenced, dating his signature Saturday, May 11, 1918.

The two dies now completed, the process now moved to the siderographer Samuel De Binder (1865-1942). His job was to take each of the now completed dies and transfer the impression onto a steel cylindrical roller. This was achieved by repeatedly rocking the softened steel roller over the hardened die. The roller was then hardened and carefully rolled onto the soft steel printing plate. In the case of the first airmail stamp this involved one hundred impressions for each plate in a ten-by-ten format.

At this point, the number 8493 was added at the top of the blue vignette plate, and 8492 at the top of the red frame plate. In addition, bisecting vertical and horizontal guidelines with arrows in the margin were also added to this red plate. The final addition to the bottom left of the frame plate were the siderographer's initials S De B. The plates were then hardened in preparation for printing.

Beginning on May 10, the stamps were printed on a hand-operated nineteenth-century “Spider” press in much the same way as the world’s first stamps back in 1840. The only difference was that the 1918 stamp, being bicolored, required two runs through the press. An article, written some sixty-six years earlier, describes the process.

"He lays the plate on the “bed” of the press before him. He then grasps a bunch of hard blanketing duly charged with red ink and transfers the ink to the plate with a “wriggling” motion, which fills up the engraved lines with the pigment. Next he carefully smooths the polished surface, leaving the ink only in the lines into which it has been forced. (An assistant takes) a sheet of paper and lays it on the plate. Now, he turns the wheel, which pulls it in between two cylinders, and they squeeze out the ink from the lines indented on the steel upon the paper, and it comes back to its master. Charles Dickens, Household Words, volume IV (1852)"

Following each printing the sheets were dried then pressed. The completed sheets were then gummed before being perforated. The final operation was the trimming of the sheet to a uniform size for shipment to post offices. This was accomplished by cutting off the entire top and right margins, completely removing not only the perforations but also both the blue and red plate numbers.

The red frame was printed first. The plate was inked and placed on the bed to await the dampened stamp paper. After printing, the assistant lifted the sheet and placed it face down with interleaving to dry while the printer removed the plate, warmed it, inked it, and polished it in preparation for the next sheet. At a certain point, when a set number of sheets had been printed, the red plate was replaced by the blue vignette plate, and the process resumed with the red printed sheets being dampened as before. There are therefore two ways the error sheet could have been produced with either the plate or the sheet being turned 180 degrees prior to the second print run. It is actually impossible to know which happened, but it does seem likely that any error of this sort would occur either with the first printing of the day or when a new stack of part-printed sheets was introduced. What is known is that a further eight sheets were discovered later during the perforating stage. One can only guess how many error sheets were disposed of while wet off the press.

Considering the demands on the Bureau at the time with a war raging, a shortage of manpower, increased demand for printed items such as Liberty bonds, and the printer’s lack of recent experience with bicolored stamps, the surprise is not so much that an error sheet was produced but that there was only one.

Aside from eight truly remarkable days in May 1918, William Thomas Robey led an ordinary life. Born April 21, 1889, just north of Baltimore, he was raised in Potomac, Maryland, and educated at the University of Maryland, before settling down, marrying Caroline Scott in June 1913, and becoming father to Louise, the first of two daughters, in 1917. With a good mind for numbers he found employment as a cashier in 1913 with well-known Washington stockbrokers W.B. Hibbs & Co. located in the Hibbs Building at 725 15th Street NW. Having secured promotion from assistant cashier the previous year, he was living a quiet life in a brand-new one-bedroom apartment at 1420 Harvard Street, some two miles north of his office, in Columbia Heights.

Some two years before he had taken up collecting United States stamps at the suggestion of a work colleague and within a short period of time he graduated to small-time dealing. Records of payment to one dealer show several transactions in the range of ten to twenty dollars and one for nearly forty, however that was on behalf of a fellow collector. By 1917 he had joined the American Philatelic Society and in a very short space of time he appears to have gained a fairly sound knowledge of the stamp business and perhaps a far greater one than he has ever received credit for.

It was a fine day when he left his Harvard Street apartment on the morning of Tuesday, May 14, 1918, a little cooler than usual owing to the new daylight savings which had been instituted some six weeks previously. A warm spring had provided some welcome respite from the record-setting cold of the previous winter. Believing this was the day the new 24-cent Air Post stamps were going on sale at his local post office, William Robey wanted to be there when they opened at nine. Unbeknownst to him, the new stamps had actually been on sale the previous day. From his home he would have walked down Harvard Street to Fourteenth where he would catch the Capital Traction Co. streetcar for the two-mile trip south to New York Avenue. The morning’s newspaper carried stories from the war in France with America now entering its second year in the conflict. In sports, the Cleveland Indians were in town and would face the Senators later that afternoon, who would fall to the visitors 4-2.

The war had brought a marked increase to the population of the capital and the streetcars were notoriously slow during the busy morning and evening rush hours. It would have taken Robey fifteen to twenty minutes to get down to the junction with New York Avenue. Fortunately getting to his local post office at 1319 New York Avenue merely involved crossing 14th Street and walking a short distance. His office in the Hibbs Building was just one block in the opposite direction.

Robey wanted to see the first bicolored stamps to be issued in nearly two decades. Four days earlier he had written to his friend Malcolm Ganser in Norristown, Pennsylvania, to make him aware of the new issue and, referencing the 1901 Pan-American issue, to be on the lookout for inverts. He had also arranged with Ganser to send and receive covers to be carried on the first flights between Washington and Philadelphia the following day.

The next four hours are described by Robey in several conflicting reports over the next twenty years.

In a letter to Malcolm Ganser the following day, Robey explained that at 9:00 he arrived at the Post Office and looked at a few of the sheets and found them all to be normal but something told him to return at 12:30 and check at another window. Upon his return the postal clerk on duty brought out and sold the invert sheet to him, at this point he apparently blurted out “Give me another one like the one I just bought.” The clerk, upon seeing the error, slammed the window down and presumably went to inform his superiors. Twelve days later, on May 26, in an article for the Collector’s Journal Robey states that at 9:00 A.M. he bought a normal sheet then returned to purchase the invert sheet at 12:30 P.M.

Finally, in 1938, he wrote the oft-quoted version of the story for Weekly Philatelic Gossip: This time he explained that upon his first visit to the post office at 9:00 there were only a few poorly centered sheets but was informed that more would be arriving at noon. He resolved to return “promptly at noon” but first went to his bank and cashed a check for $30. Upon his return he found the same clerk on duty and asked to see any new sheets. The clerk then “reached under the counter and brought forth a full sheet…………and my heart stood still”.

Calmly he paid for the stamps then asked the clerk if he had any more sheets. Apparently there were only three, all normal. Leaving the post office with the sheet safely tucked away he headed out east on H Street then down to 514 11th Avenue to the next closest post office in search of more inverts. Finding none and not even having the money to pay for them, he returned to his office on 15th Street and told his colleagues of his good fortune. Soon after, a colleague would venture out to the other three post offices known to have the Air Post stamps to search and, whether deliberately or not, inform one or more of these outlets of not only the existence of a sheet of inverts but also the name and work address of the buyer. An hour after Robey’s return, two postal inspectors arrived at the Hibbs Building to reclaim the sheet. Threats that the government intended to seize the stamps fell upon deaf ears. Robey coolly cut them off informing them that before he would consider parting with his sheet the Post Office Department must first retrieve every 1869 and 1901 invert in circulation.

It is unfortunate that Robey’s 1938 account has been used as the basis for the many retellings of his story. It is understandable that an account written twenty years after the event should be somewhat vague but the major problem is that it disagrees with Robey’s own contemporary version. A secondary problem is that even his initial versions do not agree, and they do not make sense.

He does seem to have arrived at the post office at 9:00 A.M. However, when he arrived he either looked at the sheets, saw they were normal, and bought one; or looked at the sheets and noticed they were poorly centered. He then either returned to a different (or the same) window at 12:30 P.M. (or noon) at the same post office where he bought the sheet and then showed the clerk the error and blurted out “give me another one like this” before hurrying out.

Robey’s claim to have bought a sheet at 9:00 A.M. in his interview twelve days after the event is very hard to explain. Whether he went back to the same clerk or not is probably irrelevant, but why, when he was presented with a sheet of stamps that he had to have known was worth, at the very least, four or five times his annual salary, did he say anything at all to the clerk?

Another unanswered question is why was did Robey, intent as he was in searching for inverts, wait until after he had visited the post office at 9:00 A.M. to go to his bank and cash a check for $30? For a man who, in a few short hours, would meticulously begin a marketing campaign worthy of the most seasoned dealer, it just does not ring true. More important, why did he ever bother mentioning the bank trip at all?

Perhaps William Robey’s story was not quite as straightforward as he later suggested. Is it possible that, with more than $24 in his pocket, he went to the post office at 9:00 A.M. and bought the invert sheet much as he described later but without the outburst? Could he have been picking up just a few of the new Air Post stamps for his letters and yet more for his stamp-collector colleagues when the unwitting cashier presented him with the opportunity of a lifetime? Did he then have the foresight to buy the additional normal stamps for his associates? It is worth noting here that at least one other May 15 24-Cent First Flight cover left Hibbs and Co. the following day addressed to a Boston stamp dealer, and it was not addressed by Robey. It is also a matter of fact that he had a reciprocal arrangement with Malcolm Ganser in Norristown.

Following his return to work he would have been faced with a dilemma. He had a sheet of incredibly valuable inverts yet he had gone to the post office to buy stamps on behalf of himself and his colleagues, any or all of whom could be expected to want to share in his good fortune. Did he tell his colleagues he was going out at lunchtime to buy an entire sheet for himself? Could the events then have transpired as is commonly suggested, only it being a normal sheet that was purchased then carefully switched before being deliberately shown to the cashier? By doing this Robey very cleverly established a verifiable account, including proof that the purchase was made by him, on his own time, and with his own money.

It is a great pity that neither Ganser nor any of the those involved in the events of that day, excepting Robey, ever wrote detailed accounts.

It is also quite possible that the story unfolded exactly as is generally believed. In which case the seemingly unnecessary outburst was an unwitting stroke of genius. The direct result was the suspension of Air Post stamp sales across the eastern seaboard within hours of Robey’s lunchtime visit. Post offices checked every Air Post sheet on hand and once sales resumed certain limits were placed on the number of stamps individuals could purchase. It can also be inferred that vigilance was strongly cautioned for any post office employee who did not wish to incur the wrath of their employers. In all, eight sheets of inverts were eventually found, defaced in ink, and finally destroyed.

If the first step in establishing value is limiting supply then the second is promotion and William Robey wasted little time letting the world know of his good fortune. A call to the Washington Post ensured an interesting postscript to the following morning’s article on the launch of the country’s new airmail service. Telegrams were sent, one to his friend Ganser and one to an associate and well-known Westfield, New Jersey, dealer Elliott Perry advising them to “Look for sheet 8493, aeroplane. They are inverts.” Amusingly the blue 8493 plate number only appeared on Robey’s sheet due to the inverted vignette plate. On all normal stamps this number was printed in the top margin that, along with the red (frame) plate number, was cut off before the sheets were shipped to the post offices. At the time Robey owned the only plate block of the entire issue. His third telegram was to Philadelphian Percy McGraw Mann, dealer and author of the new-issues column in the leading stamp publication, Mekeels. Mann would later feature prominently in the eventual sale.

Telephone calls were also made to Washington dealer Hamilton F. Colman, who arrived later in the afternoon at the Hibbs office with the first and somewhat optimistic offer of $500, which Robey declined with good humor. Two collectors also dropped in to see the wonderful new discovery. For a man who had, by his own account, only returned with his prize at one in the afternoon, he had executed a quite brilliant marketing plan.

Following work, and possibly still trying to avoid another meeting with the postal inspectors. Robey headed down to Colman’s office at 509 7th Street where he met and showed off his prize to a group of philatelists that included Joseph Leavy and Miss Catherine Manning, present and future curators of the National Philatelic Collection. Colman’s office was located in the original 1875 Second National Bank Building. One of the bank’s founders was Amos R. Eno, whose namesake great-grandson would purchase the Jenny Plate Block some twenty-nine years later.

William Robey finally returned home to his wife and baby daughter at around 9:00 in the evening. He had apparently spent the rest of the evening riding the streetcar with his treasure in hopes, accurately as it turned out, of avoiding the postal inspectors who had visited the apartment on Harvard Street earlier. That night the Robeys went to sleep, their new stamps in a briefcase under the mattress at the foot of their bed.

Whether Robey actually slept the night after his famous purchase is not known. We do know that he was under the impression, erroneously as it turned out, that there must have been at least three more invert sheets in circulation. The misinformation was attributed to Joseph Leavy, the National Curator, who had surmised that owing to the straight edges (i.e. no perforations) at the top and right of his sheet then it was likely that the stamps had been printed in sheets of 400 and this was only the bottom left pane. This would normally be correct, but the first Air Post stamps were so rushed that there were only two plates of 100, one red frame and one blue vignette. The straight edges existed because the sheets needed trimming before shipment.

The fact that the Post Office Department was now aware of the error must have provided some comfort. As he would have known, the relatively common 1-cent Pan-American inverts were selling at a tenth of the price of the far rarer 2-cent. He wasted no time sending an early morning letter to Elliott Perry in New Jersey informing him that he had “secured a sheet of 100 with inverted center, the only one in existence at this date. Are you interested?”

If he imagined his workday might provide some respite from the events of the previous twenty-four hours he was wrong. A postal inspector arrived purportedly on direct instructions from the Postmaster General himself. The rather weak threat this day was that unless he turned over the sheet the Post Office would void the stamps for postal use, apparently the authorities were now more concerned with the inverts actually traveling through the mails.

This was the last visit Robey received from the inspectors. It appears the Post Office Department was probably more annoyed by the proximity of the blunder than the blunder itself. Tensions were obviously running high with the start of the Air Mail Service — a completely new system involving two simultaneous takeoffs from two cities with a stop at a third location, carrying mail charged at a new rate with new stamps fresh off the presses, all to be launched within a day in front of the President of the United States and a large group of Washington’s elite. To find out that some of these letters might be bearing stamps with upside-down planes courtesy of a post office a little over a mile up the road was probably a little hard to take. To quote Captain Benjamin Lipsner, the man charged with coordinating the Army Planes and Pilots with the Post Office. “I reacted like an eruption of Vesuvius and the strain I was under turned this small problem into a huge monster.” Despite all this, at 11:36 that morning, the first airmail flight of the new service managed to take off from Washington.

One more recipient of Robey’s telegrams got in touch that day. Percy Mann of Philadelphia was coming to Washington the following day, and he wanted to meet Robey and see the stamps. Robey made it home that evening without further incident and was probably ready for sleep when his phone rang at 11:00 P.M. It was Perry calling from New Jersey: the letter he had sent that morning had arrived early evening. He was interested and he wanted first refusal. Things were starting to look a little better.

Thursday was a quiet day and Robey would have gone to work as normal. The news reported the successful arrival of the mail from New York via Philadelphia by airplane and although coverage of the delivery from Washington was not so forthcoming the general consensus was of a successful beginning. There were no visits from the postal inspectors. Percy Mann arrived from Philadelphia and in the evening met with Robey and examined the sheet of inverts after which he made the not unsubstantial offer of $10,000. There seems little doubt that the thirty-six-year-old author and dealer was not acting alone when he decided to make the trip down to Washington that day. Even though the sheet contained one hundred copies, $10,000 would have made it one of if not the most expensive items in United States philately. Robey politely declined, saying he had decided to try his luck in New York. Mann left with an agreement that before any sale was concluded he would be given the opportunity to make a further offer.

Robey must have left work early to travel the five hours to New York’s Penn station as he stated later that he arrived at 9:00 P.M. He made the short walk to Herald Square and checked into the 1700-room Hotel McAlpin where, awaiting his arrival, was Elliott Perry from New Jersey. He was accompanied by Percy Doane, one of the city’s leading stamp dealers and auctioneers. Fame had preceded him and both were eager to see the sheet. Asked whether he had received any offers Robey told them he had declined an offer of $10,000. At this point Perry and Robey must have discussed the option Perry believed existed between them. In a letter dated the following Monday Robey wrote, “As I told you in New York I would not agree or accept anything of such a binding nature”.

Saturday would bring little joy to Robey as he made the rounds in New York. He started downtown, at 111 Broadway, the offices of multimillionaire collector Colonel Edward Green, only to find out he was out of town. Next up was Eustace Power of Stanley Gibbons a few blocks up at 198 Broadway: he lived up to his nickname “Useless” by offering $250 and inferring he was negotiating for three other sheets. Three miles further uptown, the Scott Stamp and Coin Company was only interested in selling the sheet on Commission. Fortunately he was only half a mile from the hotel where he returned to find John Klemann of the Nassau Stamp Company. He suggested $2,500 only to be told of the Mann offer, and the refusal, both of which he considered crazy. Robey, in his own words, was “feeling rather low and disgusted.” (This is another example of inconsistency in Robey’s 1938 account. Perry, writing in 1933, stated, “I have always had a feeling that if I had shoved $11,000.00 under his nose that night in New York he would have grabbed it. He did not talk to me as tho[sic] anyone in New York had offered $12,000.00 — he seemed disgusted because nobody seemed to think the sheet was so wonderful as he did. They all expected there would be plenty more.” This does seem to indicate Perry met Robey on Saturday rather than Friday.)

As it turned out Robey decided to return to Washington on Sunday and called Percy Mann to tell him that he had decided against selling the sheet. Perhaps sensing the frustration Robey was feeling, he asked him to stop off in Philadelphia to talk in the morning. Robey agreed.

On Sunday, May 19, Mann and Robey met at the Broad Street station. From there they traveled five miles west to 53 North 62nd Street, the home of Eugene Klein.

Hungarian born Klein was the premier stamp dealer in Philadelphia and possibly the whole United States. Fluent in multiple languages, he traveled frequently throughout Europe buying up collections for resale at home. In a very short space of time he established himself as an authority in many areas of philately, and an astute businessman.

Though Klein spoke infrequently of the Inverted Jenny, he implied that he was the last of three Philadelphians who joined together to buy the sheet from Robey. Percy Mann was the first; he had received notice via a telegram from Robey on the day the sheet was found. Although he was known as a writer for Mekeels' new-issues section, he was also a dealer in his own right. Realizing the opportunity, he immediately sought out Joseph Steinmetz, at the time a Major in the Army Ordnance Reserve. Steinmetz was famous as an aviation pioneer, inventor, stamp collector, and sometime dealer. He had gained a measure of notoriety some years before involving the selling of valuable duplicates from the post office even though the charges were dropped after a number of years. Steinmetz readily agreed to join with Mann, and shortly after Klein completed the triumvirate.

It is clear that this group was serious from the very beginning. Their initial offer to Robey was $10,000 or twenty times the $500 offered by Hamilton Colman. At a $100 per stamp wholesale it was double the retail price of a 1901 One-Cent Pan-American invert, and the Air Post stamp had only been in the post offices for three days. In a further three days, when Klein and Robey finally met, the bid would be raised again.

Klein, for his part, examined the sheet and, satisfied, simply asked him to name his price. Robey replied that he would not accept anything less than $15,000. Klein conferred with Mann and then asked him to grant him an option to purchase until 3:00 the next afternoon. The following day Klein called to exercise his option to buy and arrange for delivery to his office at noon. A follow up letter from Klein “confirming our conversation at 4:30 P.M.” indicates the option may well have been until 5:00 or later. Had the option expired at 3:00 P.M. Robey would have been in a position to accept a last minute offer from Hamilton Colman who had called to raise his initial offer of $500. to an astounding $18,000.

Back at Union Station on Tuesday morning, William Robey boarded the train to Philadelphia with his father-in-law, Harry Collier Scott. As a precaution Robey carried an empty briefcase while Harry, a Philadelphia native, carried the stamps rolled up in a shoebox. They needn’t have worried as the train journey and short half-mile trip to 1318 Chestnut Street passed without incident. Shortly after the two left, Robey was clutching a certified check for $15,000.

Had he picked up a discarded New York morning newspaper on the way back to Washington he might have been surprised by the headline: “$20,000 BY COL. GREEN/FOR AIR MAIL STAMPS/Sheet with Plane Inverted.” In a quite stunning coup, Eugene Klein had managed to track down his best client, apparently in the depths of Texas, and sell him the entire sheet for $20,000. The newspaper story was no doubt supplied by Klein, perhaps as a snub to the New York dealers who had given Robey such a torrid time the previous weekend, or perhaps a reminder to the Post Office authorities to be extra vigilant lest they make the same mistake again.

Bizarrely, Klein, Mann, and Steinmetz never truly owned the sheet. Klein alone funded the conveyance; however, the stamps must have been sold, at least verbally, the previous day. For his efforts, Klein was rewarded with half the $5,000 profit, leaving Mann and Steinmetz with $1,250 each for their troubles.

When compared to today’s multibillionaires, Colonel Edward Howland Robinson “Ned” Green was only moderately super-rich. The half share of the $100 million or so he inherited in 1916, at age 47, was equivalent to, depending upon which measurement one uses, a mere few billion dollars today. Son of the famous Henrietta “Hetty” Green (1834-1916), the infamous “Witch of Wall Street,” Green grew up with his younger sister Sylvia, very much in the public eye. The press followed Hetty intently with her bank balance the only thing growing faster than her legendary frugality.

Colonel Ned was never poor. His family, the Howlands, had made a fortune from the whaling industry and Ned had a moderate trust from an early age. A large man, Ned had grown to 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed nearly 300 pounds by middle age. His most notable feature was a cork left leg, the result of a childhood injury that resulted in an amputation at age eighteen. This has been mostly attributed to Hetty’s penny-pinching attempts at obtaining free medical treatment although, in truth, it was probably only a contributing factor.

What Green did after his mother died was spend, and he spent conspicuously. Million-dollar purchases included a palatial seafront mansion in Massachusetts with its own airfield and the world’s largest private yacht. He bought a house in Manhattan, had a private Pullman railcar built (by George Pullman), jewelry for his new wife, Mabel, and a revolving selection of young female assistants, custom-built cars, and coins. His wallet contained $1,000 and $10,000 bills and, at any given time, would total anywhere between $100,000 and $250,000.

Beginning in 1917 Ned started to collect stamps. Perhaps collect is too fine a word. What he actually did was accumulate, and on a grand scale. He did not so much buy stamps as he bought whole collections for ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollars at a time, and sometimes much more. He placed a standing order for every new issue in the world in both singles and blocks, and also albums that were rarely filled. In a ten-year span, after which his interest waned, he amassed a collection that was appraised at $1.3 million upon his death at age 67 in 1936.

By far his most famous stamp purchase was that of the Inverted Jenny sheet in May 1918. Having followed Eugene Klein’s advice to sell a number of these so that collectors would have a chance to own such a great rarity, the then exorbitant price of $20,000 for the sheet now seemed a relative bargain. From an initial price of just a few hundred dollars a stamp, the record by the time Ned Green’s remaining stamps came to auction was $4,100 for a beautifully centered single example. The twenty-eight E H R Green sales held between 1942 and 1946 contained no fewer than forty-one copies. Four position blocks, five fully perforated singles, and sixteen straight-edge copies realized nearly $110,000. Together with the money from the copies sold by Klein of over $10,000 the Jenny sheet had become a very profitable investment.

The single highest price of the Green sales was realized on the afternoon of Monday, November 13, 1944 in a Harmer Rooke sale in New York. Described as “the greatest showpiece in all philately” the Jenny Plate Block of eight was sold for $27,000. The winning bidder was Y. Souren on behalf of Princeton New Jersey, collector Amos R. Eno.

At thirty-five years of age Amos Eno (1909-1985) was one of a new generation of stamp collectors born in the twentieth century. From an old New England family, Eno was the somewhat surprising beneficiary of his great-uncle Amos F. Eno’s 1915 will that left him $1.5 million in trust at the tender age of six years.

Eno’s dealer and representative at the Green Sale in 1944 was Souren Yohannessiantz, or simply Y. Souren as he was known. Georgian by birth, he fled the Bolshevik revolution as a teenager and set up as a stamp dealer in New York in the early 1920s. One of the first forensic philatelists, he used film, x-ray, and ultra-violet to weed out altered and forged stamps. He kept meticulous records, owned a superb stock, and was the great showman of his age.

The Green plate block consisted of eight stamps, although the top left stamp (position 85) had become detached during Green’s ownership. Souren then removed the adjoining single (pos. 86), and the bottom arrow pair (pos. 95, 96). Eno retained the plate-number block and position 86; Souren, the pair and the remaining single.

The death of Y Souren in October 1949 marked the end of the first half of the twentieth century. It also appears to mark the end of Amos Eno’s interest in stamps. The sale of Souren’s stock in the early 1950s ran concurrently with two sales from Eno. The first containing position 86 took place on February 1950; the second, containing the Plate Block, was scheduled for May 18, 1954.

Benjamin Phillips (1885-1968) had just turned sixty when he started collecting stamps seriously. Just missing out on the Green Sales, he made up for it over the next twenty-two years. The son of T. W. Phillips who discovered oil and gas in Butler, Pennsylvania, he enjoyed a long and successful career in the oil and gas and banking industries. A measure of his wealth is the forty-room “Elm Court” in Butler that was constructed at a cost of $3 million in the years 1929-1931.

On May 18, 1954, Phillips paid $18,250 through agents Raymond and Roger Weill to obtain the newly configured Plate Block of four. He would go on to reunite all the major position blocks before selling his entire collection for $4.07 million in 1968, a few months before he died.

The Weill brothers set up shop with their father at 407 Royal Street, New Orleans, in 1932. Roger (1909-1991) and Raymond (1913-2003) would become the preeminent stamp dealers of the second half of the twentieth century. In a career spanning some sixty years the brothers bought and sold many of the world’s great rarities to the hobby’s greatest collectors, and several more than once.

No dealer in United States stamps since Eugene Klein has dealt with more copies of the Inverted Jenny than the Weills. The Plate Block of four, six further blocks, and thirteen singles total 41 stamps, the exact number of copies retained by original owner Ned Green.

Following its purchase in 1968 as part of the Phillips collection, the Plate Block was subsequently sold in 1971 to an anonymous collector. It was during this period that under the auspices of the brothers, the block was displayed at Anphilex (New York) in 1971, Interphil (Philadelphia) in 1976, and Ameripex (Chicago) in 1986. The collection was then bought back by the Weills, who then returned it to inventory until 1989.

British Bank Hambros purchased the Weill brothers' stock in 1989 for a figure believed to be in excess of $10 million. As part of the deal, Hambros sent the entire consignment to Christie’s Stamp Department for dispersal. The first sales were scheduled for October and the Jenny Plate Block was about to make its first appearance at auction in thirty-five years.

On the evening of October 12, 1989, in a crowded salesroom in New York, the Jenny Plate Block was the star attraction of the sale. Bidding from the room and the telephone banks easily passed the $600-800,000 presale estimate. The final hammer price on “the most important item in United States philately” was an astounding $1 million dollars, $1.1 million with the 10 percent buyers premium.

Following the sale, Mr. Confer remained virtually anonymous during his ownership. He was the first owner actually born after the stamps were printed and the first known owner who could be described as a self-made man. Pennsylvania native Confer began his career in local radio as a schoolboy, progressing to DJ in Baltimore before graduating to part owner, then owner of his own radio station. Buying one and turning it around led to buying more with similar results, and he has enjoyed a long and successful career. His ownership of the Jenny Plate block lasted for exactly sixteen years and a week as on October 19, 2005, the block returned to auction at the Robert A Siegel firm in New York.

The purchase of the Inverted Jenny Plate Block for $2.97 million, a new world-record price for twentieth-century stamps, was not a particularly surprising result for the sale. The buyer was well-known financial wizard and philanthropist William Gross, who was already the proud owner of four of the six known blocks. What was not widely known was that Gross was on the verge of being able to complete his collection of nineteenth-century United States issues, a feat achieved only twice before in modern history.

The stamp he required was the 1868 One-Cent Z Grill, a stamp only known used, and he had missed his opportunity to acquire the only available copy seven years previously. The owner of the elusive stamp was Donald Sundman, president of the Mystic Stamp Company; he had been using it as the centerpiece of his business’s considerable marketing presence for years. Gross’s initial overtures were rebuffed; nevertheless he persisted and, according to stamp lore, a deal was finalized minutes before the Siegel auction was due to begin.

The following week the most famous “swap” in stamp history was completed when Charles Shreve, representing Gross, completed the exchange with Donald Sundman. With it Mr. Gross became only the third philatelist to complete his nineteenth-century collection and Mr. Sundman had a new and unique marketing talisman for the next decade.

The Post Office Department began the story of the Inverted Jenny as the somewhat embarrassed then indignant government agency that, for a few short days, tried vainly to recover an inadvertent printer’s error, and, to its credit, insured that the ‘one that got away’ was the only one that did.

Beginning in 1922 the Bureau of Engraving and Printing began embracing its most famous error by creating a few deliberate die proofs; one was even produced for the national collection. The Post Office itself went one step further on September 22, 2013, when it issued an Inverted Jenny miniature sheet featuring six $2 inverted Jennies with a background featuring the main Washington Post Office, Chief Pilot Major Reuben Fleet, and a map showing the route taken. The number of sheets produced was the same as the number of stamps in 1918. In a tongue-in-cheek nod to the original error, an additional 100 sheets with the airplane right side up were also produced. All of the sheets were sealed against prying eyes, and many still remain undiscovered.

In October 2014 famed shoe designer and entrepreneur Stuart Weitzman fulfilled a childhood dream. Following the purchase of the British Guiana 1856 One-Cent Black on Magenta the previous June at Sotheby’s New York, he now owned both the greatest used and unused stamps in the world.

Since 2014 the public has been allowed unprecedented access to this unique block. Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Weitzman both the unique Plate Block and the famed 1933 Double Eagle have been on long-term loan at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan.