A rare stamp stolen in 1955 has finally been returned to its rightful owner, officials announced Thursday.
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“Every stamp tells a story and the story of the Inverted Jenny now has a new chapter”, said Scott English, Administrator of the APRL, “This is a great day for philately and the result of a great partnership in the stamp collecting community and hard work of federal law enforcement”.
The 1918 USA stamp, featuring an airplane mistakenly printed upside-down, was handed over to the American Philatelic Research Library, or APRL, at the World Stamp Show in NY on Thursday. Only three of McCoy’s stamps have been returned so far.
That is until April, when Keelin O’Neill, of Ireland, gave one to the Spink auction house in NY, which suspected it might be one of the long-lost stamps.
The library has said the recovered stamp could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The sheet was later broken up and individual stamps sold to collectors.
The returned stamp is one of four from a block stolen from collector Ethel B. Stewart McCoy in 1955.
Two of the missing four stamps were recovered in the 1970s and 80s, but there was no information on the remaining two stamps.
On Thursday at the World Stamp Show, the young man from Northern Ireland who inherited America’s most famous stamp from his grandfather watched as it was handed to the Bellefonte, Pennsylvania-based American Philatelic Research Library, which holds the rights to the four.
During the news conference, O’Neill said he had “no idea about the history and importance of the stamp”.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The rare stamp features a biplane misprinted upside down.
A spokesman for the stamp show says the unidentified man who inherited the Jenny will receive a reward offered by a stamp dealer.
O’Neill agreed to relinquish the stamp to authorities once he learned it was stolen.
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“It’s been a roller coaster ever since I found out what the stamp was”. The fourth is still missing.
