COL. GREEN AND THE INVERTED JENNYS

Dave Schenkman writes:

I don't collect ship medals, but when this one was offered on an Internet auction site I couldn't resist purchasing it. It wasn't the medal itself that attracted me, but the wording on the inside of the small cardboard box: COMPLIMENTS OF COLONEL E. H. R. GREEN. If you don't recognize this name, open your Red Book and you'll find it in the introduction to Liberty nickels. Green, who was described by Dave Bowers in Adventures with Rare Coins as one of the most colorful figures in American numismatics, is immortalized in our hobby because at one time he owned all five of the famous 1913 nickels.

Edward Howland Robinson "Ned" Green, best known as Colonel Green, was born on August 22, 1868. His mother was Hetty Green, a very successful businesswoman who was known as The Witch of Wall Street. Although she amassed an immense fortune, she was extremely tight-fisted and was a frequent topic of discussions in financial circles. According to one story, when her son suffered a broken leg she took him to a charity hospital. She was recognized, and when payment was requested in advance she decided to treat him herself. As a result, Edward's leg eventually had to be amputated.

When Hetty died in 1916, Colonel Green inherited between 100 and 200 million dollars. He was the exact opposite of his mother, and was not at all reluctant to spend his money. Lavish parties were frequently hosted at his Round Hill mansion in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, which he had built in 1921 at a cost of 1.5 million dollars.

The Colonel was an avid stamp and coin collector, and after his death in 1936 his collections were valued at well over eight million dollars. His collection of stamps was considered one of the finest of his time and Green is immortalized in that hobby for his ownership of the only known sheet of Inverted Jenny stamps, which he purchased in 1921 for $20,000. Depicting a Curtiss JN-4 airplane upside down, they are undoubtedly the best-known and most desirable stamp errors of all time. He broke up the sheet and placed one of them in a locket for his wife. In 2007 a single stamp from the sheet sold for nearly a million dollars.

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

To read the complete article, see:
‘INVERTED JENNY' STAMP BRINGS $2 MILLION (https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n47a31.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web