The exhibit does not end with the stamps. (It's possible to do this because the Philadelphia stamp dealer who bought the stamps from Robey for $15,000, carefully wrote the position of each stamp on the back in pencil before he broke the sheet apart and sold the stamps individually and in blocks.) The centerpiece of the six-panel Jenny exhibit is a re-creation of the 10 1/2-by-9-inch sheet of airmail stamps that Robey purchased, with all of the reunited stamps returned to their original positions on the sheet. Thanks to the improved fiber-optic lighting in the museum's rare stamp vault, these tiny red, white and blue stamps appear much clearer and brighter than stamps did there in the past. Most of the stamps displayed under the heading "A Lucky Purchase" have not been back in Washington since Robey sold them to a Philadelphia stamp dealer seven days after his purchase for $15,000. "You put it on permanent display, you destroy it," he said. That stamp is the most popular item in the Smithsonian's collection of 16 million philatelic items and has become an icon of American culture.īecause of fears that the stamp's rich red and blue design would fade from constant display, Bruns has not allowed the stamp to be on permanent exhibit. Today, the individual stamps are valued at $135,000 each and a block of four bearing the printing plant numbers sold for more than $1 million several years ago.Īfter 18 months of planning and negotiations with the stamps' current owners, Bruns was able to persuade the owners of 23 of the stamps to return them to Washington for an unprecedented joint exhibit with the Postal Museum's lone Jenny. Only one misprinted sheet, the one Robey purchased, with 100 upside down airmail stamps got into public hands when the stamps were hurriedly produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for the nation's first scheduled airmail service.
Cents airmail stamps series#
Perhaps no stamps are more deserving of debuting the series than the stamps collectors call "the Jennies." Thanks to grants from some of the museum's generous friends the tiny Postal Museum is determined to pull rarely seen stamps from private collections for display to the public. "We're doing what art museums have done for generations," said Bruns. "This is our Vermeer!" Bruns said in an interview, referring to the spectacular success the National Gallery of Art had earlier this year with its display of paintings by the 17th-century Dutch master. The display marks the third anniversary of the Smithsonian museum and is the first of what museum director James Bruns promises will be annual "blockbuster" exhibits. The National Postal Museum has billed its exhibit "The Jenny Class Reunion" after the Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny" aircraft that is featured on the stamp. The result has to be one of the most spectacular stamp exhibitions Washington has seen, a must-see for anyone who ever saved a postage stamp or wondered about why thousands of other people do. stamp errors - were reunited in the nation's capital after a 78-year absence. On Tuesday, 24 of Robey's stamps - the most celebrated of U.S. This was "a thrill that comes once in a lifetime," he said. The airplanes were printed upside down and Robey, a stamp collector, quickly grabbed the stamps. When the clerk tossed a sheet of 100 stamps on the counter, "my heart stood still," Robey later recalled.
NW to purchase a sheet of the new 24-cent airmail stamps. Robey, a 29-year-old cashier for a Washington stock brokerage firm, walked into a Post Office at 1319 New York Ave. ON THE MORNING of May 14, 1918, William R.
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