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The Inverted Jenny (also known as an Upside Down Jenny, Jenny Invert) is a United States postage stamp first issued on May 10, 1918 in which the image of the Curtiss JN-4 airplane in the center of the design appears upside-down; it is probably the most famous error in American philately. Only one pane of 100 of the invert stamps was ever found, making this error one of the most prized in all philately. A single Inverted Jenny was sold at a Robert A. Siegel auction in November 2007 for US $977,500.〔 In December 2007 a mint never hinged example was sold for $825,000. The broker of the sale said the buyer was a Wall Street executive who had lost the auction the previous month. A block of four inverted Jennys was sold at a Robert A. Siegel auction in October 2005 for US $2.7 million. In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, prices fetched by Inverted Jennys have receded. Between January and September of 2014, five examples offered at auction sold for sums ranging from $126,000 through $575,100.〔''The New York Times'', September 15, 2014, p. A13.〕 ==Background== During the 1910s, the United States Post Office had made a number of experimental trials of carrying mail by air. These were shown by the first stamp in the world to picture an airplane (captioned as "aeroplane carrying mail"), one of the U.S. Parcel Post stamps of 1912–13.〔(Postage Stamps of the United States First Issued in 1912 )〕 The Post Office finally decided to inaugurate regular service on May 15, 1918, flying between Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. The Post Office set a controversial rate of 24 cents for the service, much higher than the 3 cents for first-class mail of the time, and decided to issue a new stamp just for this rate, patriotically printed in red and blue, and depicting a Curtiss Jenny JN-4HM, the biplane especially modified for shuttling the mail. The stamp’s designer, Clair Aubrey Houston, apparently troubled to procure a photograph of that modified model (produced by removing the second pilot seat from the JN-4HT to create space for mailbags, and by increasing the fuel capacity). As only six such aircraft existed, there was a 16% chance that the very plane engraved on the stamp by Marcus Baldwin—Jenny #38262—would be chosen to launch the inaugural three-city airmail run; and, providentially, the plane on the stamp was indeed the first to depart on May 15, taking off from Washington at 11:47 A. M.〔Trepel, Scott ''Rarity Revealed: The Benjamin K. Miller Collection'' (2006, Smithsonian National Postal Museum, Washington D. C. and The New York Public Library, New York, N. Y.), p. 155.〕 The job of designing and printing the new stamp was carried out in a great rush; engraving only began on May 4, and stamp printing on May 10 (a Friday), in sheets of 100 (contrary to the usual practice of printing 400 at a time and cutting into 100-stamp panes). Since the stamp was printed in two colors, each sheet had to be placed into the flat-bed printing press twice, an error-prone process that had resulted in invert errors in stamps of 1869 and 1901, and at least three misprinted sheets were found during the production process and destroyed. It is believed that only one misprinted sheet of 100 stamps got through unnoticed, and stamp collectors have spent the ensuing years trying to find them all. Many collectors long thought the blue plane portion was printed first, thus it was actually the red frames that were inverted. However, research by noted philatelic authors Henry Goodkind and George Amick shows this to be incorrect; in fact, the frames were printed first and it is the planes that are upside down. In examples where the plane is so far off center that it overlaps the frames, it can be seen that the blue ink used to print the plane lies atop the red ink used to print the frames. The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum offers two explanations for how this might have occurred: either a sheet of printed frames was placed in the press upside down for the printing of the plane; or the printing plate used to print the planes was mounted inverted within the printing press. Initial deliveries went to post offices on Monday, May 13. Aware of the potential for inverts, a number of collectors went to their local post offices to buy the new stamps and keep an eye out for errors. Collector William T. Robey was one of those; he had written to a friend on May 10 mentioning that "it would pay to be on the lookout for inverts". On May 14, Robey went to the post office to buy the new stamps, and as he wrote later, when the clerk brought out a sheet of inverts, "my heart stood still". He paid for the sheet, and asked to see more, but the remainder of the sheets were normal. Additional details of the day's events are not entirely certain—Robey gave three different accounts later—but he began to contact both stamp dealers and journalists, to tell them of his find. After a week that included visits from postal inspectors who tried to buy it back, and the hiding of the sheet under his mattress, Robey sold the sheet to noted Philadelphia dealer Eugene Klein for US$15,000. Klein placed an advertisement on the first page of the May 25, 1918 "Mekeel’s Weekly Stamp News" offering to sell copies of the invert ($250 for fully perforated examples, $175 for stamps with one straight edge), but announced in his following week’s ad that the entire sheet had been purchased by an individual collector. The buyer, who paid US$20,000, was "Colonel" H. R. Green, son of Hetty Green. Klein advised Green that the stamps would be worth more separately than as a single sheet, and Green went along. He donated one invert to the Red Cross in support of its war efforts (which was auctioned off for $300), while retaining forty-one of the stamps in his own collection, including the plate-number block (initially eight stamps) and several blocks of four.〔Donald Sundman, ''The Jenny Invert Plate-Number Block'' (Edition ), Mystic Stamp Company 2012, ASIN: B008MAOPUG〕 The remainder of the inverts were sold off at steadily increasing prices through Klein, who kept a block of four for himself.〔 Green had one copy placed in a locket for his wife. This gold and glass locket displayed the inverted Jenny on one side, and a "regular" Jenny stamp on the other. This locket was offered for sale for the first time by the Siegel Auction Galleries Rarity Sale, held on May 18, 2002. It did not sell in the auction, but the philatelic press reported that a Private Treaty sale was arranged later for an unknown price. The philatelic literature has long stated that seven of the stamps have been lost or destroyed through theft or mishandling. However, this statement is inaccurate. In 2007, a copy came to light that had not been seen since Eugene Klein broke up the sheet, and was offered for auction that June. The number of lost stamps then became six. Several others have been damaged, including one that was sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Apparently Green's wife mailed one which, while recovered, is the only cancelled sample. Indeed, no Jenny invert is in pristine condition, because Klein lightly penciled a number on the back of each stamp (from 1 through 10 in the top row to 91 through 100 in the bottom row) so that its original position on the sheet could be identified.〔(The Inverted Jenny )〕〔(Siegel power search )〕Only five examples survive, in fact, in NH (never hinged) condition.〔One of these is the locket copy, which, however has another condition problem: a corner crease at the bottom right probably inflicted while it was being enclosed behind glass.〔2002 Rarities of the World (Siegel Auction catalogue, Sale 846, May 18, 2002), p. 158.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Inverted Jenny」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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