The Inverted Jenny, is a 24 cent United States postage stamp first printed on 10 May 1918, in which the image of the Curtiss JN-4 airplane in the center of the design is printed upside-down; it is probably the most famous error in American philately. Only one pane of 100 of the invert stamps was ever found, making this error one of the most prized in all philately.
Initial deliveries went to post offices on 13 May 1918. Aware of the potential for inverts, a number of collectors went to their local post offices to buy the new stamps and keep an eye out for errors. Collector William T. Robey was one of those, he had written to a friend on 10 May mentioning that "it would pay to be on the lookout for inverts". On 14 May 1918, Robey went to the post office to buy the new stamps, and as he wrote later, when the clerk brought out a sheet of inverts, "my heart stood still". He paid for the sheet, and asked to see more, but the remainder of the sheets were normal. The postal clerk who sold the sheet later said he did not realize the image was inverted because he had never seen an airplane before.
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