In school, I knew a teacher who had counted to one thousand every night for almost three years. His goal was to reach and understand just how much one million was. As a child, it seemed impressive. As an adult, I wonder what kind of marriage or dating life he had.
Had that teacher become biblically immortal and kept his count up for another 2,740 years, he would have eventually reached one billion. Only a handful of excessively wealthy individuals can fathom that amount. In truth, even they probably can’t.
Last week, lunacy with numbers once again captured headlines and people’s lives thanks to Lotto fever. The jackpot had soared above the 1.5 billion-dollar mark. A week earlier it had reached a 500 million dollars. That paltry sum apparently wasn’t enough to get people’s attention. But, over one billion? You bet. People lined up to buy tickets....
Astronomical amounts aside, for the past nine years, the US Postal Service has had a modified lottery of its own with payouts between $40,000 and $50,000. The twist is the USPS version comes in the form of a small sheetlet of six stamps reproducing the famous and coveted “Inverted Jenny” 24-cent airmail misprint stamp accidentally printed and sold in 1918.
Back then, a man named William Robey wandered into a New York post office to buy some of the new 24-cent stamps. The clerk handed him a sheet of 100. Robey noticed the blue airplane on the stamp was upside-down inside the ornate red border. Realizing he had a unique find, Robey happily purchased the sheet for $24. He soon sold it to a prominent stamp collector for $15,000 – the equivalent of $250,000 today.
Since then, owning one of the inverted stamps has been the dream of most every stamp collector. Today, each has a catalog value of $450,000. (In less than pristine condition they usually bring less than that when sold.) Nevertheless, they are the thing collectors fantasize about owning.
As a salute to that mistake of over a century ago, in 2013, the USPS printed a small sheetlet of six stamps each reproducing the famous inverted Jenny. This time, the stamp has a face value of $2.00 each. The sheetlets have been sold in sealed envelopes for $12.
Here’s the kicker. In homage to the original 100 error stamps found by Robey, of the 2.2 million sheetlets printed by the Postal Service in 2013, they also produced a scant 100 with the plane flying right-side-up. Naturally, collectors began buying the sealed envelopes containing the sheets en masse at their local post offices hoping to be lucky enough to obtain one of the 100 extremely rare sheetlets.
That all may seem like old news. After all, the stamps were released and went on sale nine years ago. Here’s the thing. Since their release, only 40 of the sheets had been found. In recent months, reports have come out that two more turned up. That brings the total to 42. Each of those has a value of upwards of $50,000. That means there are still 58 sheetlets waiting to be found.
When the stamps were first released, many post offices reported robust sales from regular customers as well as collectors. Of course, humans have short memories. These days, most of those same post offices no longer have the stamps in inventory.
Similar to our political environment, conspiracy theories have also surfaced. Some collectors claim there never were 100 sheets. Others contend a select few executives at the USPS nabbed some of the sheets for their own gain. I don’t believe any of that but suppose such rancor is now what makes the world go ‘round.
The truth is, the majority of the sheetlets are still out there waiting to be found. The fact that two more were just recently discovered is proof of that.
Here’s the best part. All of us who shelled out $2.00 per ticket to chase our stratospheric Lotto dreams and lost were left with useless slips of paper. Conversely, anyone who purchases the sealed envelope containing the $12 sheetlet of stamps hoping for a rarity will always own and be able to use the “losing” stamps as postage. Not a bad end result whilst chasing a dream.
For those interested in taking a chance, the sheetlets can still be purchased directly from the USPS online. To do so, just log onto: https://store.usps.com/store/home.
For more collecting advice, visit www.PRexford.com