Rare Inverted Jenny Stamp, Stolen 60 Years Ago, Fetches $50K Reward in New York

In 1918, an offshoot of the federal government — the Bureau of Printing and Engraving — made a specific and, in the scheme of Washingtonian blunders, relatively minor mistake.

It misprinted a batch of 24-cent stamps.

Specifically, a batch of stamps featuring the Curtiss JN-4D, a biplane nicknamed the Jenny. Due to a printing error, the plane was flipped upside down, as though caught in the middle of an aileron roll. The Inverted Jenny, as the stamps would come to be known, swiftly turned into one of the most coveted stamps among philatelists, exploding in value over the next century: A single stamp, for instance, fetched more than $1 million at an auction in May.