Upright $2 Jenny Invert pane and single sold

A full pane of six of the upright variety of the $2 Jenny Invert self-adhesive stamp, and a single stamp from a different pane, were both sold in late August by two different sellers.

Henry Gitner Philatelists of Middletown, N.Y., reported selling the pane of six in a private sale for $55,000. The pane, discovered in Wisconsin, is one of the finds previously reported by Linn’s.

Gitner said he purchased the pane from another dealer, not from the original finder.

“My prediction is no more than 40 will exist, with a few stragglers that will be found years later in sheets that were never opened,” Gitner told Linn’s.

“I also think that very few will ever be broken up even though with patience it’s the most rewarding for a dealer.”

Regency-Superior Auctions of St. Louis, Mo., sold a single $2 stamp Aug. 23 in the firm’s auction at the American Philatelic Society’s annual Stampshow in Hartford, Conn.

The lower-left single with attached margin paper was removed from one of the previously reported panes of six.

The single stamp received multiple bids in the auction and sold for $14,875, which includes a 19 percent buyer’s premium. The stamp was sold with a copy of a certificate from the Philatelic Foundation for the full pane before it was broken up, and a PSE graded certificate for the single.

“It goes to show that maybe we should break some more of them up and more collectors can own them,” Regency-Superior president David M. Kols told Linn’s prior to the sale.

Kols added a guess that at least 30 to 40 upright Jenny Invert varieties have been found but not reported.

“I do know that the people who were actually consigning it [the single stamp] to us bought two to three to four thousand of these before they hit a home run,” he added. “So they shelled out a lot of money just to get the stamp.”

On Sept. 22, 2013, the United States Postal Service issued a pane of six $2 self-adhesive stamps showing the Jenny biplane flying upside down (Scott 4806), as a tribute to the famous 1918 airmail error stamp (C3a).

USPS officials soon revealed that 100 panes of intentionally created varieties showing the biplane flying right side up on the $2 stamp were randomly distributed in blind packaging among the normal stamps marked for retail distribution at post offices.

To date, Linn’s tally of reported discoveries of the upright variety of the $2 Jenny Invert souvenir sheet stands at 18.