‘INVERTED JENNY' STAMP BRINGS $2 MILLION

With only pocket change to spend in the 1950s, collector Charles Hack focused on acquiring stamps that few wanted: overprints churned out in Eastern Europe during World War I. As a boy building a stamp collection, first in Brooklyn and later in Long Island, he could only gaze longingly at advertisements announcing the auction of an Inverted Jenny — one of the rarest and most coveted stamps in the world.

Even then, he knew it was the holy grail of postage.

At the time, they sold for more money than God, in my mind — $7,500 each, Hack told The Washington Post.

On Wednesday, Hack, 76, spent just over $2 million to buy the stamp that was so far out of his reach when he was a child. The Inverted Jenny was a misprint of a stamp created in 1918 to commemorate the start of regular airmail service. In a scramble to make the stamps in time for the inaugural flight, the printers made a batch with the Curtiss Jenny biplane flying upside down. Although postal officials quickly discovered and stopped circulation of nearly all misprints, a sheet of 100 was sold to the public. Over the years, those 100 Inverted Jennys have become the most famous and sought-after treasures in the stamp-collecting world.

When he was around 11, Hack gave up stamp collecting in favor of pursuing girls. But in the early 2000s, amid a successful career in real estate development and investing, he picked it up again when a Jenny stamp went up for auction. This time, he had the money. He bought it for about $300,000, which started my rebirth in the field of philately at a whole different level.

In 2007, a better-quality Jenny hit the auction block. This time, Hack shelled out nearly $1 million for Position 57, so named because of its original orientation in the sheet of 100 purchased by William Robey on May 14, 1918, at a post office on New York Avenue in the District.

To read the complete article, see:
A stamp just sold for more than $2 million. Meet the ‘Inverted Jenny.' (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/11/13/inverted-jenny-sale-auction-2-million/)

For the reconstructed ‘Inverted Jenny' sheet, see:
https://invertedjenny.com/salerecords

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