In 1918, one sheet of United States 24-cent airmail postage stamps was accidentally printed with an image featuring an upside-down airplane. These stamps are known today as “Inverted Jennies,” as the airplane is called a Curtis Jenny.
Eighteen years later, in 1936, a block of four of these stamps was bought for $16,000 and given as a gift to Ethel B. Stewart McCoy, daughter of one of the founders of Dow Jones & Company. In the fall of 1955, McCoy lent the block to the American Philatelic Society to exhibit in Virginia, where it was stolen.
In the nearly 60 years since the theft occurred, two of McCoy’s stamps resurfaced, one when she was still alive in 1958, which she donated back to the American Philatelic Research Library and was auctioned for $115,000; the second reappeared shortly after her death in 1980. The location of the two remaining “Inverted Jennies” is still a mystery.
Now, a stamp dealer is offering a $100,000 reward for the return of these two missing stamps.
Courtesy of The NY Times