Stamp collecting came of age when the parcel Post Series was introduced in the Series of 1912 - 1913. The stamps played with my imagination seeing primitive modes of cars, boats, trains and airplanes. In itself Parcel Post connoted something special.
As a boy growing up in rural central mass I recall seeing a Ford Model A delivery tuck. This antique was replaced with a spiffy new Dodge panel truck in 1953. The old Ford truck was bought by Clayton McGill of Elm Street, North Brookfield. for fifty years the parcel post delivery picked up parcels at the North Brookfield Station.
The allure of collecting stamps gave me a great sense of history. It still does today. It was a great hobby that is dying with e-mails and computers but stamp collecting ain't dead. The rarest of the rare live. The Inverted Jenny of 1918 is a story in itself. It is such a story a book was written of the saga of the stamp. I have owned it, I have read it and I even gave the book to Irving F. Ephraim.
As you can see, the colors of red, white and blue, in themselves set the tone. Stamp enthusiasts of that bygone era got excited with the post office printing these in sheets of 100. Only one problem, a single sheet was inadvertently printed with the Jenny upside down. As the story goes a customer refused this screw up and demanded one properly printed. Then the fun began.
The next guy in line knew he has bought a philatelic goldmine. Errors in anything can become instant hits.Take the 1955/1955 Lincoln Cent for example. This sheet of inverted jenny's flew like the supersonic jet of 20 years ago. The guy who bought the sheet confided "my heart stood still." A dealer got his hot little hands on the sheet for $15,000. Some of these stamps have been sold while forgeries of others exist.
A 2013 95th anniversary sheet issues on September 22, 2013 selling for $12 sold as a souvenir sheet. Recently I obtained the cardboard poster with the message 'The Inverted Jenny Flies Again. Yesterday I had the thrill of sharing my story with Chase Robert, age 11! Get a hobby I say for "hobbies are healthy!"
BLOGGING IS MY LATEST HOBBY!
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