Perfectly Imperfect:
THE INVERTED
JENNY
VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE
Ethel B. McCoy beamed with pride as she waited for the exhibition to begin. A director of the American Air Mail Society and an avid stamp collector, Ethel had entered a rare block of stamps to be on display at the 1955 American Philatelic Society convention. Little did she know that she would never see this collection again. The show Finally opened, but Ethel’s stamps were nowhere to be found. Confused and slightly panicked, she approached the convention Officials to Find out what had happened.
Her worst fears had come true: someone had stolen her stamps! Earlier that morning, during the day’s preparations, the thief somehow managed to slip in and vanish with Ethel’s most prized possession.
The theft of Ethel McCoy’s stamps was just one of the many wild adventures of this collection. But why were they so special? For staRters, they were printed in 1918. But more impoRtantly, Ethel’s stamps were only four out of a set of 100 that made their way into the public.
What made them really unique, however, was not their peRfection but their impeRfection. The stamp has an image of a Curtiss JN-4HM biplane, commonly known as a “Jenny.” But due to a misprint, the plane is upside-down, giving the lawed stamp its name—the “InveRted Jenny.”
TAKING FLIGHT
Back in 1918, decades before Ethel purchased the stamps, another eager stamp collector was anxiously waiting. William T. Robey looked at the clock, excited to go on his lunch break and get to the post oFFice. Even though he earned a decent living, Robey and his wife lived rather modestly in their small apartment in Washington, D.C. But
all of that was about to change. Earlier that month, on May 9, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing announced the creation of a new stamp to commemorate the first regular airmail seRvice.
When the US entered World War I in 1917, the Army felt their pilots needed more cross-county lying experience. So in 1918, the Army Signal Corps gave the Post Oice Department pilots to ly airmail planes and hired Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company to build modified versions of their JN-4H (Jenny) biplanes for the occasion. The older JN models were used mostly as training aircraft for beginner pilots, but the new models had a compartment to cary mail as well as more fuel capacity for longer lights. They called this new model the JN-4HM (“M” for “mail”). And by May 15, 1918, there were six planes assembled and six pilots ready to fly. First Lieutenant George L. Boyle flew the infamous plane whose serial number was imprinted on the now-famous stamp, a stamp which Robey still anxiously waited to get.
THE PERFECT MISTAKE
Commemorative stamps weren’t unusual. But this had
more than historical significance. Robey knew that it was also one of the few stamps printed in wo colors: red for the border and blue for the plane. Not a big deal except that this let room for a possible error in printing. How did Robey know this? Because it had happened several years before. In 1901, six stamps were released to celebrate the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. These were the first bicolored stamps of the 20th century, and the images on three of the six commemorative stamps were invented, a definite impression mistake.
As soon as the clock struck noon, Robey dashed to the post oice on New York Avenue. He saw the stamps; their brilliant colors leaped out at him, but something else caught his eye. As he looked at them more closely, he could see it: the Curtiss JN-4HM biplane in deep-blue ink was upside-down.
Robey managed to contain his excitement, for the postal worker did not notice the misprint.
Although the details of what exactly happened next are uncertain, Robey bought a sheet of 100 stamps for $24, thanked the clerk, and left. Upon returning to his ice, Robey contacted his fellow stamp collectors about his discovery.
From there, it wasn't long before the news of the misprint reached the Post fice Department. They promptly halted production of the stamps and sent two investigators to speak with Robey.
The investigators calmly asked if Robey had recently purchased the misprinted stamps and asked if he would be willing to sell the sheet back. Robey was not about to part with such valuable stamps, so he quickly refused. The two men warned that if Robey did not cooperate, the government would take more extreme measures to retrieve the stamps. Once they left, Robey sprinted back home and hid them in the safest place he could think of: under his mattress.
SELLING THE STAMPS
As the days went on, the threat grew larger over Robey’s head, so he wasted no time trying to sell the stamps to other collectors. After negotiating with a few, he finally accepted an offer
of $15,000 from Eugene Klein. Klein
then sold them to Colonel Edward Howland Robinson Green. Colonel Green was famous for his foolish spending, often throwing away his
inheritance on rare items. Green
purchased the Inverted Jennies from Klein for $20,000 but not before asking him to number and divide the stamps, some individually and some in blocks of four.
Green sold many of them but kept the most valuable ones for himself. Green was known to be quite reckless with his things; at one time, he threatened to set the collection on fire at a stamp collectors' club. Thankfully, he didn't follow through with his threat. After that, he stored all of the stamps in a safe ... except one; this particular stamp he placed in a locket for his wife. Following his death in 1936, it was discovered that the stamps were stuck together. Some of them were salvaged and sold to stamp collectors over the next several years, and that included Ethel B. McCoy.
A REDISCOVERY
After the theft in 1955, McCoy’s stamps were never fully recovered. But in 1980, two of them resurfaced. By then, however, McCoy had signed over her ownership rights to the American Philatelic Research Library. Sadly, Ethel McCoy passed away in August of 1980; after her death, she was placed in the American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame. It was not until 36 years later, in April of 2016, that a third stamp appeared. Upon further examination, it was discovered that the stamp had been purposely altered to prevent it from being identified as a McCoy original. The location of the fourth stamp remains a mystery to this day.
While not all Inverted Jennies have survived theft, bad weather, or the test of time, many are still around today and are tracked with each change of ownership thanks to Eugene Klein’s numbering system. The stamps are still extremely valuable; some have sold for millions. One was actually purchased in 2020 for over $250,000! In 2013, the US Postal Service even reissued the stamp, hoping to make money off its popularity.
Perfect Imperfections
From its inception to its mysterious disappearances, the story of the Inverted Jenny is fascinating. William T. Robey continued his stamp collecting until he died in 1949, although he never found another like it. To him and many others, it was more than just a stamp. Perhaps it was meant to be a lesson in finding value in our imperfections. Perfectly imperfect. The real McCoys.