FACTS · The Inverted Jenny 倒置的珍妮

Every fact in the voice-over, the subtitles and on screen, with its source. Read 2026-10-31. Main source: Wikipedia, "Inverted Jenny", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_Jenny , and the works it cites (named under each claim). Quoted wording is from the Wikipedia article unless marked otherwise.

1. May 1918, a new 24-cent airmail stamp

Voice: "May, nineteen eighteen. America is about to fly the mail." "The new stamp: a blue plane, in a red frame." - > "is a 24 cent United States postage stamp first issued on May 10, 1918." - Printed in red and blue (Scott Trepel, Rarity Revealed, 2006). - The U.S. airmail service began on 15 May 1918; the halftone clipping is the Harris & Ewing photograph of a Curtiss JN-4H at the Polo Field, Washington, that day (Wikimedia Commons file description, see CREDITS).

2. Two passes through the press; one sheet with the blue upside down

Voice: "Every sheet goes through the press twice. Red first, then blue." "But on one sheet, the blue went on upside down." - > "each sheet had to be placed into the flat-bed printing press twice" … "in sheets of 100" (Lawrence Goldstone, Birdmen, 2015) - > "the frames were printed first and it is the planes that are upside down." (Trepel and Ken Lawrence, Rarity Revealed, 2006) - On screen the press is a generic platen-press drawing used as a sign for printing, not the flat-bed press the stamps were printed on. - The plate number printed in the corner of the drawn sheet, "PLATE 8493", is the plate number of the inverted sheet (the blue vignette plate). Smithsonian National Postal Museum, "24c Curtiss Jenny invert single" (object 0.217665.1), https://postalmuseum.si.edu/object/npm_0.217665.1 :

"Mint 24-cent perforate stamp with the central image inverted; position 70, plate number 8493."

3. William T. Robey, $24, then $15,000

Voice: "A collector named William Robey bought it. One hundred stamps, twenty-four dollars." "A week later, he sold it for fifteen thousand." - > "Collector William T. Robey was one of those." > "On May 14, Robey went to the post office to buy the new stamps." (Boys' Life, 1987; The American Legion Magazine, 1968) - 100 stamps × 24 cents = $24 (arithmetic). - > "sold the sheet to noted Philadelphia dealer Eugene Klein for $15,000." (Washington Post, Michael E. Ruane, 2018), after "a week that included visits from postal inspectors who tried to buy it back." - The article notes that "Robey gave three different accounts later"; other accounts describe him as a clerk, the film calls him a collector, as the article does. - The silhouette on screen is not his likeness.

4. A single stamp, 2023: $2,006,000

Voice: "In twenty twenty-three, a single one sold for just over two million dollars." On screen: 2023 · one stamp, $2,006,000, 1918 · 24¢, ≈ 8,360,000 ×. - 11 November 2023, Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries: "a new record hammer price of $1,700,000", "the total cost to $2,006,000" with the buyer's premium (BBC News, 13 November 2023, as cited by the article). A USA Today report (15 November 2023) gives the same sale as "two-million dollars" on a different date; the film uses the BBC figure. - 2,006,000 ÷ 0.24 = 8,358,333 ≈ 8.36 million.

5. Lost, stolen, number 66

Voice: "Some were lost. Some were stolen." "Number sixty-six vanished in nineteen fifty-five, and has never been found." - > "seven of the stamps have been lost or destroyed through theft or mishandling" - The McCoy block of four was stolen in 1955 at a stamp show in a Norfolk hotel; the FBI recovered two, a third turned up at Spink USA in 2016 (Philatelic Foundation, Larry Lyons, 2016; NPR, Laura Wagner, 2016). - > "The only stamp that remains missing is position 66." - On screen the LOST and STOLEN slips lie on the album's margin, not on numbered slots: only slot 66 is singled out.