It was once one of the biggest mistakes in history. Now, a stamp that was printed upside down more than 100 years ago has sold for more than $2 million.
The "Inverted Jenny" is one of the rarest and most coveted stamps in the world -- and also the most famous U.S. stamp printing error. Printed in 1918 on the 24-cent airmail stamp, it features a blue inverted airplane on a red and white background. Only one misprinted sheet of 100 stamps was sold.
The undetected error sheet was sold to William T. Robey on May 14, 1918 at the New York Avenue post office, according to the National Postal Museum. Robey sold the sheet to Eugene Klein, a Philadelphia stamp dealer, for $15,000, who turned around and sold it to another collector for $20,000. That man, Colonel H.R. Green, broke it into blocks and singles, kept some, and sold the rest.
When Siegel Auction Galleries recently put a pristine Inverted Jenny known as "Position 49," because of its original orientation in the sheet of 100, on the auction block, avid stamp collector Charles Hack knew he had to have it.
It's "the holy grail of postage," Hack told The Washington Post.
It wasn't Hack's first attempt at obtaining the coveted piece of history. Position 49 first hit the auction block in 2018 but Hack's bid came in second, at about $50,000 behind the winning bid of nearly $1.6 million, according to The Post.
Since he already owns two Inverted Jenny stamps, which he paid $300,000 and nearly $1 million for in the early 2000s, Hack decided not to enter a bidding war because he "didn't want to spend that much money," he told The Post.
However, when Position 49 recently went up for auction again, Hack wasn't going to let it get away. That's why he shelled out $2,006,000 to make it his own.
According to Siegel Auction Galleries, Position 49 is "the finest Inverted Jenny that can exist." After being sold in 1918, "it remained in its pristine 'post office' condition in a bank vault for the next one hundred years and has been kept in the dark since it was purchased by the current owner in 2018," the auction house said. The stamp is graded "Extremely Fine-Superb 95." None of the other stamps from the sheet of 100 qualify for a grade above 85.
"This is the premium copy. It doesn't get any better than this," Hack told The Post. "It's the very best item of the most well-known American icon in philately, and it's a bit of American history."