Upside down stamp discovered after 61 years
One of the most famous stamps ever printed, the misprinted Inverted Jenny, has re-emerged after being stolen from a stamp show in 1955. If legal ambiguities can be resolved, the No. 76 stamp may make an appearance at the World Stamp Show New York and could be worth over $50,000, to stamp collectors. However a similar misprinted Inverted Jenny, the No. 58, which is in near perfect condition, is catalogued to be auctioned on 31 May 31 and could be worth up to $1.6m.



The question is, will a certain Inverted Jenny be cleared for landing at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan in the next few days?

This has nothing to do with air traffic controllers or glide paths. This has to do with a 24-cent postage stamp, one of the most famous ever printed, famous because it was a mistake. The experts say it was No. 76 on a sheet of 100 with upside-down biplanes — the instantly recognizable Inverted Jennies — that slipped past inspectors at a printing plant in Washington in 1918, to the chagrin of postal officials and the delight of stamp collectors ever since.

The World Stamp Show New York, a once-in-a-decade jamboree for stamp people and the little pieces of paper they love, opens on Saturday. The American Philatelic Research Library, which claims that it is the rightful owner of this particular Jenny, wants to display it at the show (where a real Jenny, a restored Curtiss JN-4H biplane from the early days of airmail a century ago, will also make an appearance).

But legal turbulence may stall the arrival of No. 76.

There is a reward at stake — actually, two rewards. In 2014, the library offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of No. 76, which was missing at the time, and $10,000 for another missing Jenny. At the same time, a prominent stamp dealer, Donald Sundman of Camden, N.Y., offered rewards of $50,000 for each of the two stamps.