The Collectors Club has closed its club house this month in preparation for the sale of its 19th Century town house. Having shared space in that building for nearly five years, the PF has moved to new office space in mid-town Manhattan, opening on August 29, 2022. Our new office is located at 353 Lexington Avenue, Suite 804, at the southeast corner of East 40th Street. Our telephone number remains the same as does our zip code.

We look forward to continuing to bring the most authoritative and reliable opinions to our friends in the philatelic community from our new office.

Our new mailing address is:
The Philatelic Foundation
353 Lexington Avenue, Suite 804, New York, NY 10016

Unseen for the last 100 years, one of the famous Jenny Airmail Invert stamps, known around the world to collectors as the stamp with the “Upside Down Airplane,” has now reappeared. It comes to light just in time to celebrate the centennial year of the stamp’s issuance in 1918 at the very beginning of air mail service in the United States.

The stamp was recently submitted to The Philatelic Foundation in New York. The PF’s experience and expertise in authenticating this iconic United States rarity is unrivaled, having previously issued Certificates of Authenticity for 86 of the 100 stamps from the original sheet, including all six of the existing blocks of four.

Matched against the PF’s detailed records, photos, and electronic images, the PF’s expert staff determined that the stamp is the long lost position 49 from the original sheet of 100 that was purchased by collector William T. Robey in a Washington, DC post office in May 1918. The sheet was sold by Robey to stamp dealer Eugene Klein for $15,000, a fortune in those days, and was later broken up for sale to collectors. Klein’s pencil notation, the position number “49” is still visible at the lower right back of the stamp. At NY 2016, the international stamp show held at the Javits Center in New York, an extremely fine example sold at auction for a record $1.3 million dollars.

Many of the Jenny Inverts have small faults, having been repeatedly bought, sold and often mishandled during the last 100 years. However, position 49 is in pristine mint condition. It was held by three generations of an anonymous Chicago area family in a safe deposit box where it remained untouched and, its whereabouts unknown, until now. Because the stamp was never mounted in an album, it is coveted by collectors as a mint, unhinged copy with its original gum. Only six unhinged Jenny Inverts, including this example, are recorded from the original sheet of 100. Based on its centering, bright colors, and its pristine gum, the PF awarded the stamp the Grade of 90 “XF” meaning extremely fine condition. It is the highest graded Jenny Invert which still remains in mint unhinged condition 100 years after it was issued.

On Friday, December 1, 2017, The Philatelic Foundation moved into its new offices located in The Collectors Club in mid-town Manhattan. The PF occupies both the fourth and fifth floors in this storied Stanford White town house. The PF’s experts and support staff occupy the fourth floor with easy elevator access to clients and visitors from the club house’s ground floor foyer. The office of Larry Lyons, the PF’s executive director, is located on the fifth floor, at which its hi-tech expertizing equipment including the VSC6000 and the Bruker XRF Spectrometer are located in a custom designed research area.

We are proud of what we have accomplished in our 72-year history in serving the philatelic community and look forward to a bright future in our new home in the years ahead. Over the past year, the PF’s stature and credibility in the collecting community saw significant recognition in our hobby. A Linn’s Editorial recognized the PF as “one of the world’s esteemed expertizing bodies.” A survey by the American Philatelic Society found that 82.8% of its members selected the PF for its “Reputation,” the highest percentage of any expertizing service in the United States.

Our new mailing address is:
The Philatelic Foundation
22 East 35th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10016

Our phone number, email and web address remain the same. We welcome visitors, so be sure to stop by in the New Year and let us show off our new home!