Rare stamp on ballot a fake

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – It fired the imagination of stamp collectors worldwide: The Inverted Jenny, a rare and valuable stamp depicting an upside-down biplane, had turned up on a ballot mailed by an anonymous voter.

It seemed the stuff of legend.

It was.

Two experts from national stamp organizations brought gauges and magnifying glasses to the Broward supervisor of elections’ office Monday and examined the small red and blue stamp.

Their findings:

“It’s an obvious fake,” pronounced Randy Shoemaker, an authenticator with California-based Professional Stamp Experts.

“A counterfeit,” concluded Mercer Bristow, an expert with the American Philatelic Society from Pennsylvania.

The stamp, which the experts said could still command $10,000 to $20,000 at auction because of its curious story, will likely be donated to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.

“I’m sort of leaning in that direction,” said Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, who has custody of the stamp as an official election record.

The 24-cent stamp was discovered on Election Night by county commissioner John Rodstrom, who was sorting absentee ballots as part of the county’s Canvassing Board. Rodstrom recognized the stamp with the upside-down Curtiss JN-4, or Jenny, mail plane as a possible undiscovered rarity.

Only 100 were mistakenly printed in 1918, and collectors have zealously pursued them since.

Last year one sold for $525,000, and a block of four fetched $2.9 million. Of the original 100, only about five remain unaccounted for.

The suspected Jenny was on an envelope containing an absentee ballot. Because the paperwork bore no identification, the ballot was disqualified. Snipes took up offers from two stamp organizations to inspect the mystery stamp for free.

It didn’t take long for Bristow and Shoemaker to determine the stamp was a fake. It was a lithograph, not an engraving; its blue color didn’t match the original; its number of perforations was wrong.

“It was a philatelic prank of sorts,” said Shoemaker. “Essentially it defrauded the government out of 24 cents postage.”

Rodstrom, a Jenny believer, was crestfallen but keen to find a home for the impostor.

“I would very much like to see it end up in the Smithsonian,” he said.

So would W. Wilson Hulme, the museum curator who earlier asked Snipes to donate the stamp – even if deemed a fake.

“This is a piece of history and it captured the attention of many,” he said.

Whether Snipes takes up Hulme’s offer depends on her attorneys’ advice. As an official election document, she must keep the stamp for 22 months before destroying it.