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Call it the "Jenny UN-vert."
The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.
To celebrate the opening of a new wing of the National Postal Museum in Washington, the
U-S Postal Service issued a reprint recently of the most famous U-S stamp ever -- the
error with the upside-down airplane. It's known as the Jenny Invert... because the
Curtiss Jenny bi-plane on it is upside-down.
The original stamp in 1918 was 24 cents; copies of the invert now sell for hundreds of
thousands of dollars. The Two Thousand 13 reprint is two dollars, sold in souvenir
sheets of six.
But one hundred of the sheets were printed with the airplane RIGHTSIDE-up.
"We think it will be fun." :02
You can't order them: Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says the hundred sheets are
scattered at random among the other two million.
"We've spread them out all over the country, plus we sell them through our eBay
store." :04
...which is at ebay-dot-com-slash-stamps... and also at shop-U-S-P-S-dot-com. And your
chances of getting one of the rightside-up sheets is more than one in 22-thousand.
"We actually packaged each one of these things individually, so nobody knows what's in
the package." :06
And even Donahoe will have to take his chances.
"I am a stamp collector, but I do not have one of these sheets." :03
Initial reaction from other stamp collectors is mixed: Some think it won't get the
attention the Postal Service hopes.
"We think that it will generate interest around stamp collecting." :03
Others warn it sets a dangerous precedent. And some say it's a cute idea.
I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting,
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.
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