The Siegel firm’s annual Rarities of the World sale will be held on June 30-July 1. The auction will offer to collectors’ attention a great variety of philatelic items including the newly-united Herod-Travers cover with Scott 321, high-grade singles, blocks, postal history, Hawaii, Possessions and Worldwide including Argentina 15-centavos Escuditos tete-beche pair etc. One more spectacular lot that will appear during this sale is Inverted Jenny Position 11 – the most famous stamp in American philately.
The 24¢ stamp was issued near the end of World War I for the first U.S. government airmail service. Only one sheet of 100 was sold with the misprint showing the plane flying upside down, creating stamp collecting’s most famous stamp errors. The sheet was purchased by William T. Robey on May 14, 1918, the first day the stamps went on sale in all three principal airmail route cities: Washington, D.C., New York and Philadelphia.
The other owners of this unique philatelic artefact are Joseph A Steinmetz, Eugene Klein, Colonel Green etc. Despite the great rarity and value of Inverted Jenny stamps, many of the original hundred have been mistreated by collectors over the years. Colonel Green himself allowed moisture to affect some of the stamps he retained. However, nowadays Inverted Jenny is one of the most desirable stamps and it is expected to fetch $450,000 at Siegel sale.
