@amadeus Did you ever have a copy of that expensive US airmail stamp with an upside down airplane on it?
I think you would know what I mean; it dated from about the 1920s or 30s and was quickly recalled, when the post office realized its mistake.
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I think you would know what I mean; it dated from about the 1920s or 30s and was quickly recalled, when the post office realized its mistake.
The stamp was issued in 1918. The normal stamp as per my 2016 catalogue is valued at 70 cents unused or 35 cents used. The invert you mention is valued at $700,000.00 unused or $350,000.00 used. I have the normal stamp, but no, I have never even seen one of the inverts. They were part of the very first designated U.S. Airmail stamps, a set of 3 with face values of 6c, 16c and 24c. The inverted stamps was of the 24 cent one. It was the 11th US stamp to be accidently printed as an invert since issuing the first US stamp in 1847.
@amadeus Oh 1918, I stand corrected!
Thank-you.
I said 20s or 30s because I remembered the biplane. Someplace I read about a customer who bought some of those stamps with the upside down airplane error and after buying some and noticed the error, asked if there were any more of those ones for sale. At which point the cashier tried to get the sold ones back, but the buyer refused (and of course kept some very valuable stamps).
This may have been the incident which drove the recall of the defective issue.
I have the story of the incident on my computer, but with thousands of entries in my stamp section I am not sure where it is at the moment.
@amadeus So you already read it, too? I should have guessed you would have known about the incident, anyway. Now that some of the post office functions have been farmed out to outside contractors, one wonders how long it would be before expert eyes caught such errors, or whether they would be spotted immediately.
I shouldn't be expecting it. Long ago the US Postal Service strongly supported stamp collector and larger post offices maintained a philatelic window during all of their work hours. Now, unless you ask specifically to have postage stamps attached something mailed in their office they will affix a metered strip to your outgoing mail. No postage stamps on most mail. And personal letters once a large user of postage stamps with the advent of e-mail and texting are quite rare these days. The Postal Service has always of course liked people to collect unused stamps since that amounted to revenue to them at the minimal cost of printing a postage stamps for the stamps were never used to pay for a service. Whereas if you use them the stamped item actually has to be delivered at a rather greater cost.
Compared to what once was, the Post Office does not sell that many postage stamps, and with a diminished number of collectors the number of errors made and caught would be very low. What they have also done in more recent years while I was collecting still when an error was caught, was to print many thousands of copies of the error and sell them as valid postage. In spite of the error, they were not rarities and anyone could get one then with no premium on it. No valuable stamps! A minimum value for any stamp in the catalogue today is 25 cents but actually you usually cannot sell to anyone at any price because the serious collector likely has a dozen or more copies already.
@amadeus When I have been in the States and mailed things in bulk from US post offices I have noticed that if I hand over items for mailing they may just print off a strip and charge me accordingly.
If I tell them a list if destinations worldwide and mention a particular number of items they may then open a book of stamps and according tear out the requisite stamps for me to 'lick and affix'.
Seems like US post offices do sell a bunch of other stuff as well, stationery, etc., some it quite tasteful and memorable.
New postal employees and even some the older ones would not even recognize as valid many of their own stamps never mind recognize a less than obvious printing error. The only time in US history any postage stamps were demonitized [declared worthless by the government for use on the mail] was during the Civil War. Any stamps from the end of that war until now, which have never been used are still valid for postage today, but how many copies of an unused 1938 Benjamin Franklin stamp at a ½ cent face value would you need to mail a letter at today's 1st class rate of 55 cents. On a standard size envelope it would be impossible to fit 110 stamps without overlapping them. It is quite likely that I have a couple dozen of those stamps in my collection. The value in the catalogue, used or unused, for that stamp is at the minimum of 25 cents. That they are over 80 years old means nothing when hundreds of thousands of them were issued and collectors and dealers possess probably ten of thousands of them still today.
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@amadeus I wonder what old Benjamin Franklin would have made of postage stamps?
(I think he would have appreciated JFK's quip about all the talent present on the occasion that Thomas Jefferson dined alone....)
Delivery of the mail existed in the USA long before the time of Franklin, but as the first Postmaster General he effectively established its beginnings organizing it from the hodge podge that existed before among the colonies. As I recall people would often have to pay for the mail delivery when they received it. He would have thought the implementation of postage stamps a bit more than 50 years after his death and wise move indeed.@amadeus I wonder what old Benjamin Franklin would have made of postage stamps?
(I think he would have appreciated JFK's quip about all the talent present on the occasion that Thomas Jefferson dined alone....)
I am unfamiliar with the JFK quip...
@amadeus The way the Universal Postal Union is set up with the sender paying seems to work the best!
(I did read of some small country overseas threatening to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union for some reason or another...which begs the question of who would be hurt the most by such move? themselves!)
Agreed! The international agreement with regard to mail was a very early show of harmony among the nations, as everyone was helped by it. Early examples of some Arabic and some oriental languages on stamps that few outside the home country could read made it necessary for someone to give a little with regard to making their stamps understandable. A Japanese stamp printed only in Japanese used to sent a letter to the United States that had to go by way of the Philippines could make it difficult for the postal authorities outside of Japan to assure the proper payment was already made.
@amadeus The Universal Postal Union is more about issues of sovereignty and mutual interests than it is about whether the countries themselves have friendly or close relations. Historically, the multiplicity of countries that have the authority to issue postage stamps for their territories has in any case made for interesting stamp collecting.
Withdrawing from the Universal Postal Union would be like shooting oneself in the foot.
Great photo; often the challenge is to hold the camera still when you get that close...
China Town in Barkerville BC Canada Aug. 24 2020
Barkerville was the main town of the Cariboo Gold Rush in British Columbia, Canada, and is preserved as a historic town. It is located on the north slope of the Cariboo Plateau near the Cariboo Mountains 80 kilometres east of Quesnel.
Barkerville was the main town of the Cariboo Gold Rush in British Columbia, Canada, and is preserved as a historic town. It is located on the north slope of the Cariboo Plateau near the Cariboo Mountains 80 kilometres east of Quesnel.
Great photo! and it looks as if this building dates from the early days of Chinese immigration to western Canada. You still see Anglo-Saxon realtors in BC distributing notices such as 'opt to preserve the stability of the district' - i.e., meaning = "Chinese potential buyers and investors need not apply".
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