FAMOUS STAMPS 2 Articles | Stamps

By: Darren Williger

The Inverted Jenny. This stamp may very well be the most prized find for philatelists. Due to an increase in postage rates, the post office decided to rush out a new stamp especially for this price increase. This was a stamp that shows a Curtiss Jenny, which is the name of a biplane used to transport the mail. There was such haste in the designing and printing of these stamps that several mistakes occurred. Not only was there a rush in getting the design and printing done. The particular design also required two colors meaning that the sheets needed to be passed through the printing press twice. This caused the error probability rate to be extremely high in the printing of these. As it were, there were inverted errors where the plane ended up on the stamp upside down twice during the years of using this particular design. Most of these were caught and destroyed but it’s believed that at least one sheet containing 100 stamps got out into the mainstream. Postal authorities worked diligently to find these stamps but stamp collectors, upon hearing of the mistake, knew that these could potentially have value and were smart enough to hang on to them over the years. Today many stamp collectors spend much of their time looking for these Inverted Jenny’s. These stamps have been known to sell for as much as $525,000 USD.

The British Guiana 1 cent magenta. This is the rarest postage stamp in the world. Only three were ever made in British Guiana aka Guyana. The history of these stamps is quite interesting. Apparently a shipment of stamps never arrived by ship so the local postmaster authorized a couple of newspaper publishers to print out three stamps. The postmaster gave very specific instructions about the design but the printer decided to put his own little twist on it. As a result the postmaster was displeased with the result. He ordered that each of these three stamps that went out were to be signed by the postal clerks as a preventive method against forgery. Today only one of these stamps is known to exist. This stamp is heavily soiled, postmarked and even cut but one can still see the signature as ordered, by the postmaster, on the stamp.

The Benjamin Franklin Z-Grill. This one is holds the distinction of being the rarest AND most valuable stamp. This stamp was created with an embossed waffle in the “Z-Grill” design with the hopes that this would absorb the canceling ink that the postal system uses on the stamps. This was done in hopes of discouraging those who wanted to cheat the post office however, it was soon found to be impractical and discontinued. Today there are only two of these stamps in existence that’s known of.

These stamps are holding some distinction of having some unique history or being the first, rarest or most valuable among all the stamps in history therefore making them extremely sought after by collectors all over the world.