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Holy grail of stamp collecting passed right before my eyes

2K views 7 replies 3 participants last post by  63Blazer 
#1 · (Edited)
Just like there are things like the Gibson Moderne (alleged prototypes out there) and the super rare Gretsch White Penguin (Penguin, not Falcon), there are things in stamp and coin collecting that bring on instant "holy grail" status.

I was in line at a local Northern California post office, where I knew the workers well for years, and I saw a person a few ahead of me pass on an inverted sheet. With extremely strict quality control, inversions are even less common than in the days of the famous upside down Jenny airplane stamp. Example of inverted stamps go beyond just the Jenny stamp:

http://www.designinterviews.com/new...on-10-Most-Valuable-Stamp-Inverts.-46634.html

When a customer received an entire sheet of 20, they gave it back to the postal worker and complained they looked "off" and asked if they could get a better sheet. Being a collector I spotted this rare inverted sheet and said nothing hoping that when I got to that teller, I could get that sheet. When I did get there, they said policy does not allow them to sell errors like this and that it will be destroyed. I pleaded nicely but they would not relent.

For years I kept thinking if I had been more assertive or offered to buy the stamps when I was a few back in line that things would have been different. The postal worker was so-so about taking away the error stamps and it didn't show the gravity of what they were holding. The postmaster later told me that she would have shut down the line had she been there and seen that mishap and made a huge stink and had all the drawers checked out. It's not policy to sell a 40 cent stamp that can in turn be cashed in for a car or house. They are in business of delivering mail, not making random people very rich. Oh well. It's one of those things you kick yourself for every time it comes to mind.

The other time something like this happened, but to a much lesser degree financially, was when the hs band was tossing junk into the dumpster to clear out room and then wanted to toss out this ugly, old electric guitar. I too thought it was ugly but spared it from the dumpster and gave it to a friend who then traded it for a nicer looking guitar. It was a very old 1960s Epiphone Coronet.
 
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#4 ·
Evidently nobody realized they reissued the inverted Jenny. I got a Priority mail with a full sheet stuck to it.
That's cool that USPS reissued that, but in huge numbers. The original Jenny is said to be 100 or fewer examples out there. Any modern inversions similar to Jenny will be that rare and quality control probably catches and destroys those.

Jenny is actually a pretty inversion and can be mistaken for actually being designed like that. But in my link, there's this butt ugly Richard Nixon inversion and people who actually have stamps like this but don't know the value, probably were too embarrassed to use them and probably put them in drawer forever or tossed them. I am not a fan of Nixon but had I received a block of Richards like that, I would kiss the whole sheet!
 
#6 · (Edited)
It was just some regular large format stamp, like the Richard Nixon one, but goofed up on the printing and offset. I can see stuff like that from many feet away where as a not collector may actually not notice and use them to mail off bills with.

There are probably some Jennys left in some ignorant person's stamp collecting book thinking that it was a barnstormer in a typical upside down maneuver.

I wonder if there are some famous Ibanez bloopers akin to Peter Green's botched and famous pickup job on 1959 Gibson Les Paul? Some say Gibson factory put the humbucker magnet in backwards and installed the neck pickup upside down, but other sources said the repairman made these two mistakes while fixing a wiring problem and taking apart the humbucker only to reassemble it wrong. The issue was that the blooper was unintentional!





What was the result of an inverted magnet and backwards installation on a dual humbucker Les Paul was getting a middle position which actually made a convincing enough Fender type sound and was forever memorialized in early Fleetwood Mac recordings. Sometimes mistakes can render the item to be more desirable. At first I didn't like the thin sounding Peter Green tone, but after owning a lot of Gibsons and other humbucker equipped guitars, I realized just how unusual the Peter Green sound was. Sure, you can get a Fender to get quack, but it's not a tone usually found on a dual humbucker set without push-pulls or mini toggle switches.

Anyway, if ever there was a guitar in guitar collecting that was akin to the Jenny stamp in the world of stamp collecting, it's the Peter Green.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Just like demand for RG550 made Ibanez reissue it, the USPS reissued Jenny due to extreme interest. Also the first and second US stamps were reissued at some point many years later at two different time. The idea of a reissue to to kind of bring it back but not exactly so.

The very first US stamps, iconic for collectors, was reissued twice just for kicks. It was slightly different as to making forgeries from those impossible.

That being said some of the one of kind custom shop Fenders list for more than some of the guitars they are copying, especially 70s reissues.
 
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