A Famous Airplane and an Even More Famous Stamp

Monday, October 7, 2013
              (post # 2 of the day)

A Famous Airplane

and an Even More Famous Stamp

    When I was young and later into my teens, my brother Michael and I collected stamps. My father had encourages us to take up a hobby. There was a famous company by the name of H.E. Harris from whom we would buy American used stamps, and the occasional mint stamp. The company would send us stamps on consignment every month or so,and we would select and pay for them. The stamps came by regular mail, we sent them back by regular mail,and for years there was never a problem.  When I was buying and selling old toys on E-Bay, I never had a problem with either Canada Post or the USPS (United States Postal Service). Sadly, because there are some less than honest people on E-Bay, many sellers are now obliged to use more-costly shipping method because these "crooks" make complaints against sellers. They inform E-Bay the item never arrived, and E-Bay most of the time takes the side of the buyer. So nowadays, shipping is more costly for both buyers and sellers. 

    Eventually time marched on ( I love to use old expressions), my brother got married, and moved away, and we split our collections. We also collected mint plate blocks (usually the 4 corners of a sheet of stamps with the name of the printer). He got the American collection, and I got the Canadian Plate Block Collection.  I think he fared better. I should have sold my Canadian collection, when Canada post started to allow people to use their photos on stamps. You could send in a  portrait, and the post office would print out your face on the stamps. My second "awakening" should have been when "Micky Mouse" and other cartoon characters were issued. So now I have a collection that can't be sold for even face value!  

    Returning to today's topic, I was just at the NYTimes website, when the story of the famous inverted stamp of  1918 appeared. For those who don't know the story, a stamp collector by the name of Mr. William T. Tobey walked into his local post office in 1918, and  saw a huge error on a sheet of stamps. The 24 cent airmail stamp had the image of the plane upside down.  I donl;t want to tel the rest of the story, so please click here to read the story at the NYTimes (The New York Times). The USPS is reissuing the famous stamp, but with a @.00 U.S. denomination instead of the original 24 cent value  - I'm sure they dont' want to through this again. And I just remembered something. Canada Post issued a stamp that someone found had a major error on it. So what did Canada Post do? They issued millions of the same "error" to make the stamp useless as a rarity - spoilers!

   To visit the United States Postal Service page for this stamp please click here.

I could only find this toy from Bertoia. The image on the stamp is different from this one. I did find  a toy from Stout Auctions, but it would have taken too long to write and ask for their permission. So Please click here to see the Stout Auction's listing of the famous Curtis Biplane that was manufactured as a toy by republic ( A JN-4 Jenny Bi-Plane). 

As for the new stamp issue, below is the stamp issued as a block of 6.

Interestingly, I had trouble even finding Republic  Curtis Jenny Biplanes. THey may be rare, but they didn't achieve giant returns at auction.

Thanks for dropping by to visit,

and have a great part of the day or night,

wherever you may be.

Stacey

toysearcher@gmail.com