[MSN] Flight of fancy: forged airmail stamp captures imaginations

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Flight of fancy: forged airmail stamp captures imaginations
JESSICA GRESKO
Associated Press
MIAMI - Jim Gallup has traced every line of a rare 1918 stamp called the
Inverted Jenny, copies of which can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He recognizes the proper shade of red and blue on the stamp, the cloud
pattern behind a biplane that is upside down in its center, and even knows
most of the tiny digits on the plane's tail: 38262.

When Gallup began printing reproductions of the stamp three years ago he
created a 3-D computer model of the sheet of stamps, then went over every
line on the stamp just as its engraver would have. To mark his stamps as
copies he labels them on the reverse.

The Minnesota native estimates he has sold 7,000 to 8,000 of his
reproductions over the Internet, far more than the 100 real stamps known to
exist. Most of them go to California and Florida, he said.

So, Gallup was intrigued when the stamp allegedly turned up on an absentee
election ballot in Florida in November, spotted by an election commissioner.
Gallup wondered if it might even be one of his reproductions or, somehow,
almost impossibly, real.

He wasn't the only one sent speculating and scurrying for a magnifying glass
after the find. Experts examined the stamp in person for the first time this
week and definitively declared it a fake, but the incident captured
imaginations and caught even some people close to the stamp off-guard. The
Smithsonian's National Postal Museum has now asked for the stamp, saying
it's part of history.

Gallup later determined the stamp wasn't one of his after seeing a
photograph. He was glad, he said.

"I guess I just didn't want to have to answer to questions," he said.

And the difference between the stamps: "Mine's better," he said.

The postal service first produced the 24 cent Jenny stamp in 1918 to be used
on the nation's inaugural airmail flights. A printing error caused some of
the biplanes in its center to be upside down. A single sheet of 100 of the
inverted stamps made it into the hands of the public, purchased by a
collector and later broken up and sold.

In the years since, the stamps have seen their share of adventure, according
to a book on the stamp. One was in a London bank during the bombing of the
city during World War II, a vault that later flooded. Another was reportedly
spirited out of Cuba as it was in the throes of revolution. And a number
have been stolen: one from the New York Public Library, and a block of four
from a stamp convention in Virginia in 1955. Two of the convention stamps
are still missing. The stamp even had a part in a 1985 movie where it was
also mailed.

Other Jenny lore, though dubious, includes the tale of a widow who gave away
her husband's books with a Jenny stuck between one book's pages and a man
who nearly took his to the grave before a relative retrieved it from the
man's suit pocket as he lay in a casket.

"Stranger things have happened," said stamp dealer John Nebeker of this
latest case and the remote possibility it was an original. "Things like that
do happen, but not very often."

Nebeker specializes in what he calls EFOs, stamps that are errors, freaks
and oddities. He said a stamp club he belongs to in Provo, Utah, spent a
part of a recent meeting cataloging all the reasons the stamp on the ballot
had to be a copy, but one woman in the group couldn't be persuaded it was a
fake.

"We couldn't talk her out of it," Nebeker said.

She wasn't the only one who initially entertained a small possibility it
could be real. Donald Sundman, president of the Mystic Stamp Co. in New
York, owns a block of four of the genuine stamps, a group that sold at
auction for almost $3 million. He completely dismissed the account at first,
he said, thinking that some prankster had cut out the stamp from a book or a
catalog and pasted it on an envelope. When he saw a small photo of the stamp
he was surprised.

"I thought, 'Oh my goodness, it's a real stamp.' I thought this really could
be real," he said.

The possibility lasted 12 to 15 hours. Sundman hadn't counted the stamp's
"teeth," the perforations around its border. A friend eventually pointed out
they were incorrect.

George Amick, a former newspaper editor and columnist who wrote a book about
the stamp says those heart-stopping moments are part of the stamp's appeal.

"The story goes on," Amick said of the latest find. "It just seems like
there's all these great yarns."

Even though this particular stamp turned out to be a fake, its discovery
also benefited the stamp community, Amick said.

"Everybody is talking about it," agreed Wilson Hulme, curator of philately
at the National Postal Museum. "Everybody would like to know who did it."

Hulme has one theory. It's common for stamp collectors to have a drawer of
stamps of little value and use them to mail letters, he said. He suspects
the individual was a stamp collector, one possibly having a little fun.

Peter Mastrangelo, the executive director of the American Philatelic
Society, said his group received calls from media around the world after the
incident. Mastrangelo viewed the stamp this week in Fort Lauderdale and an
expert from his organization determined it was a fake. Wearing an inverted
Jenny tie for the occasion, Mastrangelo said he believed the attention may
have benefited stamp collecting but worried it had created an inconvenience
for some people involved.

"I would hope out of all this that people who were once interested in
stamps...it might rekindle their interest in stamps again," Mastrangelo
said. Or, he said, maybe it would prompt others to begin collecting.

Amick remained lighthearted about the incident, and if the person who sent
the ballot ever identifies him or herself:

"I'd say, 'Hey, congratulations, you ought to be in public relations, and
also thank you on behalf of stamp collecting.'"

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