SUPER STAMP SUNDAY: HOW TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE...

Block of inverted "Jenny" stamps...

Misprinted in 1918, the stamps bear the image of an upside-down plane in flight. The stamps have ranked among the most valuable for years. Many editions of the Guinness Book of World Records listed the images as the most valuable stamps of all-time.

The plane is a Curtiss JN-4 (“Jenny”). This was a World War 1 trainer plane that moved to Airmail service after the War. It is known that 700 of the mistakes were printed, but inspectors only caught approximately 600 of the mistakes. The block of stamps that was sold is possibly the rarest of them all. The printing plate's number is visible in the left corner. No other stamp in the series contains that feature.

The stamp was auctioned by the Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries, INC. The total price of sale, after buyer's premium, was $2,970,000.00. The last Jenny stamp sold at auction, also sold at Siegel Auctions, brought $525,000.00 in June, 2005.

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/Home/4/1/73/1014?articleID=50832

P.S. I know most (if not all) the original Jenny stamps are already owned by collectors and such. But I used to collect stamps, and I'm eccentric as hell. So who's to say that another stamp collector (now deceased) didn't keep his most interesting and valuable stamps hidden away in some battered old metal box or trunk? And his unsuspecting family stashed all his "worthless" belongings away in the attic, after they inherited his property?  You never can tell. Truth really is often stranger than fiction :-)

Update:  Mystic Stamp Company sells Inverted Jenny plate block; purchase price ‘north of $4.8 million’  YIKES!!

AMERICAN GOTHIC (REVISITED)

(for Carmelita)

The portrait was his idea: That
proud half-blind farmer with the
menacing pitchfork in his strong
hand. I am barely there. The
Victorian brooch you see
belonged to our mother: A
lasting St. Valentine’s Day gift
from Father - in 1892: Roses are
so perishable. The merciful
townspeople are not ignorant of
my brother’s unnatural intent:
Their glittering eyes told me
only I am to blame. So I remain
at home - in my Father’s house:
A spinster recluse, not right in
the head. Blissfully corrupting
my poor brother’s bed.

Poem © 2009 by Dylan Mitchell 
Painting © Joe Phillips

PICTURE PERFECT FRIDAY: BE MY VALENTINE...

for Roy

SYLVIA PLATH: 1932 - 1963

Woody Allen as literary critic...

WORDS

Axes After whose stroke the wood rings, And the echoes! Echoes traveling Off from the center like horses. The sap Wells like tears, like the Water striving To re-establish its mirror Over the rock That drops and turns, A white skull, Eaten by weedy greens. Years later I Encounter them on the road---- Words dry and riderless, The indefatigable hoof-taps. While From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars Govern a life. Poem © Sylvia Plath

LET US PRAISE THE HUMBLE PHONE BOOTH...

Phone Booth (the movie)

God, I miss the humble phone booth. We never had a phone when I was growing up, so the only way I could call somebody (even during an emergency) was to hotfoot it to the phone booth right across the street from our apartment.

Apart from the affordable cost (10 cents), it was really cool to hang out in the heated booth for an hour or two during the winter. I'd often bring along a cup of coffee, dial up a few friends and just make myself at home. It was a safe place where I could feel more connected to people and the world.

Just about everybody I know has a cell phone now, and I cannot remember the last time I saw a phone booth. I sometimes check out movies from the library that feature an awesome phone booth moment or two: The Birds, A Patch of Blue, Superman, Rosemary's Baby, The Rose, and Phone Booth - which I'm pretty sure is the only movie in which a phone booth is the biggest star. (Oddly enough, I was never shot at, verbally abused by hookers, or bothered by people when I visited my phone booth during the early 1970s. It really is a different world now...)

By the way, I haven't seen any of the new Superman movies. How does Clark Kent manage to become Superman now that phone booths have become obsolete? Does he dash into the nearest Men's room or something? Perhaps at a public library? That's the only place I can think of that will allow its patrons to use the Men's room for free. At most establishments he'd have to buy/order something first, and stand in line for a good ten minutes or so. It's all a sad mystery to me. Let us praise the humble phone booth.

Essay © 2015 by Dylan Mitchell