Coin Monday at Heritage Auctions: One Coin for One Stamp

Oct. 19, 2009
Written by John Dale

I don’t buy too many stamps anymore. Most of my bill-paying happens online, and e-mail has largely replaced physical letters (emphasis on largely — greeting cards and thank-you notes are the main exceptions).

That said, I do need to buy at least one stamp a month, so I do have a degree of firsthand experience with the increases in price for first-class stamps that have been a yearly experience since 2006.

By contrast, the first major change in the price of a federally authorized first-class stamp was a step down, from the rate of five cents authorized in 1845 (two years before the first nationally distributed stamps were actually printed) to three cents in 1851. In the same year, the first U.S. three cent silver coin came out.

In the words of many ironic hipsters and assorted less pitiable people: “Coincidence? I think not!”

In actuality, three cents was merely a denomination of convenience for a Congress that was trying to solve an entirely different problem. The ongoing California Gold Rush brought the United States vast quantities of wealth, but it also wreaked havoc on the relative prices of gold and silver. Briefly, the U.S. coinage at the time was set up to recognize a specific ratio in the value of silver to gold. When the supply of gold shot up, thanks to the California discoveries, gold’s relative worth went down, and that of silver went up. Suddenly, the silver content in coins like quarters and dimes was worth more than the face value.

With silver coins hoarded for their metal content and thus not circulating, commerce that involved making change became dicey. Stopgaps like fractional currency (paper money in denominations less than a dollar) were unsatisfactory. Congress had to come up with a way to get silver back in circulation, but doing so by reducing the silver content of existing denominations (thus making their face values greater than their worth as silver bullion) was politically unpopular. Creating a new denomination bypassed that sticking-point; while the earliest three cent coins were only 75% silver, as opposed to 90% silver for other denominations, the new denomination could not be called debased, because there was no prior higher standard for its composition.

In early 1851, Congress was also considering a bill to lower postage rates, as noted above. This provided the necessary cover, and the Post Office Act of March 3, 1851 included a section authorizing the three cent silver coin and specifying its weight and metal content.

Through the 1850s, one three cent silver coin, like lot 193 in the October Dallas U.S. Coin Auction, could buy one stamp, like this three cent stamp in an upcoming Internet Rare Stamp Auction.

The tiny three cent silver coins were not enough to alleviate the nation’s coin shortage, and in February 1853, all silver coins smaller than a dollar, including the three cent silver, had their weights reduced. At the same time, the three cent silver coins had their composition changed to 90% silver, in line with the other denominations. The three cent silver denomination lost its original role as the nation’s sole subsidiary silver coin, and its pretext — the purchase of postage stamps — became its sole reason for being.

Despite this, the three cent silver denomination was produced in quantity until the Civil War, which drove virtually all silver and gold coinage out of circulation and into personal hoards. From 1863 on, coinage of three cent silver pieces never exceeded token amounts, and the introduction of a three cent coin in copper-nickel was a further blow to the same denomination in silver. Still, production limped along until 1873.

Even in 1873, the cost of a stamp remained three cents; in fact, the price would not rise above three cents until 1958!

It’s hard to imagine a coin being made to pay for stamps these days, though, and I’m glad for it. I’m not sure I could handle having a 39-cent coin, a 41-cent coin, a 42-cent coin, and a 44-cent coin all jingling in my pocket at once!

To leave a comment please click on the title of this post.

-John Dale Beety

That's 872-6467, not 867-5309: Calling Up the Inverted Jenny

It's 867-5309 if you're trying to call Jenny (and really, if you're prank-dialing the digits from a Tommy Tutone song, you need a hobby...maybe stamp collecting?), but if you're interested in an Inverted Jenny, as in "One of the Two Most Awesome U.S. Stamps" Inverted Jenny, you'll want to dial 872-6467. It won't be Jenny who answers, but Heritage. (That's 1-800-872-6467, actually. Tommy Tutone didn't provide an area code, but I will!)

It's not just any Inverted Jenny that's coming up in our August 2009 Signature Stamp Auction, to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but the single highest-graded Inverted Jenny that qualifies as "never hinged." The gum on the back of the stamp is completely undisturbed; in the cataloger’s words, it has “original gum without a single gum skip or bend.” (Here’s the Wikipedia entry for stamp hinges, sure to contain a few terms or sentences that will make the philatelists reading it cringe but a solid-enough reference for the rest of us!)

The Inverted Jenny stamps all famously come from a single sheet of 100, purchased by William T. Robey the day after the stamp type went on sale and quickly sold to Philadelphia-based stamp dealer-auctioneer Eugene Klein. He in turn sold the sheet to Colonel E.H.R. Green, wealthy scion of the "Witch of Wall Street," Hetty Green. He was both a noted philatelist and numismatist; not only did he own all the Inverted Jenny stamps at one time, he also owned the complete set of five 1913 Liberty Head nickels! It was Green who owned the sheet when it was broken up, at the suggestion of Klein, and many of the Inverted Jenny stamps were sold off as individuals, including this one, which was in Position 68 on the sheet of 100.

Owning any Inverted Jenny stamp would be cause for celebration, but this one is particularly desirable. As noted, the stamp was never hinged, highly unusual for the time, and its condition is remarkably strong for a stamp going on 90 years old. Reprinted in the auction catalog and on the same Web page as the stamp is a most interesting letter from Mr. Robey, dated May 15, 1918, the day after Robey's purchase of the Inverted Jenny sheet. In it, Robey asks the recipient whether he had received a telegram concerning the Inverted Jenny sheet and inquires as to the recipient's interest. It's a remarkable document, and today, if devotees of American philately were asked "Are you interested?", the answer would be a resounding "Yes!", and not only for the full sheet of 100...these days, a single stamp would do.

If you could hold The Holy Grail of Stamp Collecting, without permission, would you do it?

Feb. 4, 2009
Posted by Noah

Either you know exactly what stamp I’m talking about or you don’t. I’m guessing most anyone that is coming to HA.com, either to bid or consign, has at least a passing knowledge about American pop culture. I can therefore assume that you at least know what the stamp I’m talking about – the rare and beautiful “Inverted Jenny,” one of which is in Heritage’s inaugural stamp auction, Feb. 5-7 – even if you don’t know what it’s called. If you still have no idea, then please continue to enjoy the underside of the rock that has obviously been your pop culture reference point for the last, oh, say, century or so…

The point of all this? Certainly not to berate you specifically. I know that you have great taste and all sorts of trivial knowledge stored away. This is actually my way of trying to point to the coolness of the newest Heritage auction category, stamps, which is debuting with its first auction tomorrow, Feb. 5, running through the seventh, and I’m talking about the opportunity I had about a month ago while in a brief meeting – conveniently held in a busy hallway – with our Director of Stamps, Steve Crippe, and the Account Executive for the department, Rupal Dalal.

Steve is an interesting guy, and he knows his stamps. He’d have to to take charge of a stamps department here, given that stamps used to be a staple of Heritage Co-Founder Steve Ivy’s auction repertoire (what hasn’t been?), and Steve doesn’t mess around when it comes to such things. Needless to say, Crippe’s got a good amount of expectation on him to deliver a great sale, and by all accounts he’s up to it, at least judging from the amount of rare and important stamps in this inaugural auction.

So… where was I? Oh yes, The Jenny… See, there happens to be a Jenny Invert in this first stamps auction, and I know for a fact that, at least up until the time of the meeting in question that Crippe carried the thing in its plastic holder at all times in his pocket or his hand. For a brief second, however, he put it down on a chair between Rupal and I and went off to check an email. There it sat, in all its tiny glory, on a pile of papers. I looked at Rupal, she looked at me, and I picked it up.

“Wow,” I said. “Half a million bucks.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to pick that up without permission,” she said.

I pictured the security cameras, and Steve Ivy, Jim Halperin, Greg Rohan and Paul Minshull all watching. Any second now, I thought, the doors will open and the Auction Police will swiftly take the stamp, extradite me from the area, and beat me senseless in a room usually reserved for grading coins.

It will be worth it, I thought, and clutched the thing tighter.

I didn’t get in trouble, yet, and – given half a chance – I’d do it again. Here’s a link to the Jenny, and here’s a link to the Stamps Auction. Check out the video highlights of the auction. There’s lots of great stuff.