Flip

Most often, inverts occur when printing multicolor stamps by repeatedly running a sheet of stamps through a printing press . The printing worker can easily make a mistake by inserting a half-finished sheet on the wrong side, as a result of which flips appear. Since the possibility of such a printing marriage is obvious, almost all sheets of stamps with marriage are detected and destroyed in the printing house, even more of them are revealed during mailing to post offices or already in offices before sale.

It happens much less often when a flip is in the printed form or plate itself, that is, the typographic stereotype itself is flip. The most famous case is the “ Inverted Swan ” from the early brands of Western Australia .

Inverted Center

Inverted center with a portrait of James Cook on a stamp on the Cook Islands , 1933, 1 penny ( Yt # 39)

“Inverted center” - a type of flips with the central part of the figure turned 180 °. Usually these are postage stamps printed in two colors, one of which is printed on the center of the stamp. A classic example of such stamps is Inverted Jenny , one of the very first US airmail stamps released in 1918 ( Sc # C3a) .

Some postage stamps of Russia of the 19th - early 20th centuries with inverted oval centers are also known. They depicted a double-headed eagle and the emblem of the postal ( postal horns ) or postal and telegraph (postal horns with two intersecting lightning arrows) departments. A total of 11 types of stamps were issued with inverted centers. They are among the rarities of Russian philately. One of these brands, produced in 1902 and with a face value of 35 cents , is unique. It was printed on paper with vertical light stripes and found in a single copy, and is in a private collection outside Russia.

There are rare whole things with Russian stamps. Such is an envelope of a registered letter with a 14-kopeck stamp of the 1889 issue sent from the village of Ataman to Astrakhan on March 8 (14), 1903 . In the mid-1970s, this envelope was sold for $ 5,250 at auction at Harmer, a New York-based trading company.

In the 1970s, a second envelope was found with the same 14-cent stamp with an upturned center, which paid for a letter sent from Moscow on May 8 (20), 1891 and delivered to Petersburg the next day. The find was made by a Moscow philatelist among a bunch of old letters.

Inverted Frame

When printing stamps in several passes, due to the incorrect position of the sheet in the printing machine, sometimes the frame was not turned upside down, but the frame. An inverted frame is found on stamps in several countries. The first Danish stamps with the image of a postal horn have an ornamental frame, which is almost completely symmetrical, so an inverted frame can be found only after a careful study of the stamp.

Inverted Background

Inverted background is the name of a variety of stamps that sometimes occurs when printing a stamp background with a separate run. Inverted stamps are known among postage stamps in Russia, the USA and other countries. Background flips are not as clear as the inverted center. On a stamp with a portrait of Dag Hammarskjöld (USA, 1962), only the yellow layer is turned upside down, so it’s far from immediately understood that the white background is not at all part of the brand’s design .

Inverted Watermark

Inverted watermark - a kind of one-color stamps, when the mark is turned upside down in relation to the watermark.

Inverted Overprint

The overprint on the stamp may also be upside down. Many of them are quite common, since the urgent nature of the overprint itself implies the lack of careful control of the printing process. Many brands of the RSFSR of 1922 are known with an inverted overprint.

Rare wrappers are highly regarded. “Inverted Jenny” has long been sold at prices over 100 thousand US dollars per copy ^{[1] [2] [3]} , Canadian flips with the image of the St. Lawrence River are approaching the price of these amounts ^[4] . High prices for envelopes represent a great temptation for printing workers who steal defective sheets from the printing house and try to pass them off as genuine, as happened in 1996 with the “ Nixon reverse ”.

Reversible stamps are the subject of special thematic collections , some of which become known by themselves, precisely as collections. For example, the collection collected by a resident of Pittsburgh ( Pennsylvania , USA ) Robert Kanliffe ( born Robert H. Cunliffe ), who died in 2008 at the age of 83, went under the hammer at the Spink Shreves Galleries auction for almost $ 4 million ^[5] . Then, the “Inverted Jenny” that was in it was estimated at $ 150 thousand.

  Australia

• Inverted Swan (1855)

  Belgium

• Inverted Dendermonde ( Eng. Inverted Dendermonde , 1920) - an inverted image of the town hall of Dendermonde is printed on the stamp; one of the most valuable Belgian brands

  India

• Indian flip , 1854 ( Yt # 5a; Sc # 6c)

  Canada

• Redefinition of the St. Lawrence River , 1959 ( Sc # 387a)

  Russian Empire

• Inverted oval centers (XIX - early XX centuries) ^{[6] [7]}

  USA

• Inverted Centers 1869 , 1869 ( Sc # 119b, 120b) - The 24-cent mark ( Sc # 120b) is the most expensive reversal in the world and the most expensive single US mark ^[2]
• Changes to Pan American , 1901 ( Sc # 294a — 296a)
• Inverted Jenny , 1918 ( Sc # C3a)
• Redefinition of Dag Hammarskjöld , 1962 ( Sc # 1204)
• The CIA Redefinition , 1979 ( Sc # 1610c)
• Nixon's Flip , 1995 ( Sc # 2955)
• Overhaul of the Savings Bank

• Indian Reloading (Postage Stamp)
• Stamp printing errors
• Inverted jenny
• Reversal of Dag Hammarskjöld
• CIA rewrite
• Tet-besh

• Alekseev K. A rare envelope // Philately of the USSR . - 1976. - No. 7. - S. 28.
• Large philatelic dictionary / Under the general. ed. N.I. Vladinets and V.A. Jacobs. - M .: Radio and communications, 1988 .-- 320 s - ISBN 5-256-00175-2 . (See inverted frame , inverted background , inverted center , invert articles.)
• Philatelic Dictionary / Comp. O. Ya. Basin. - M .: Communication, 1968 .-- 164 p.
• Fundamentals of Philately. - 2nd rev. edn. - State College, PA, USA: American Philatelic Society , 1990. - P. 155, 165. - ISBN 0-933580-13-4 . (English) [Fundamentals of philately.] (Retrieved December 24, 2015) Archived December 24, 2015.

• “How rarities appear” is a chapter from the e-book “The World of Philately” V. A. Novosyolova (Smolensk) on the site of the Union of Philatelists of Russia “World m @ rock”
• "Errors on stamps | Changes " - an article on the portal " Philatelist.ru "
• Inverts Philatelic Gallery . National Postal Museum; Smithsonian Institution. Date of treatment October 24, 2009. Archived February 26, 2012.
• “Four defective postage stamps sold for 2 million 970 thousand dollars” - note dated October 20, 2005 on the website “Tape. RU"
• “A collector from the USA has acquired the most expensive brand in the world” - note dated November 4, 2005 on the website “Tape. RU"
• “The collector gave 825 thousand dollars for a rare postage stamp” - note December 28, 2007 on the website “Tape. RU"
• “Former CIA Agent Calculates Inverted Jenny,” a note dated February 8, 2008 on the Stamplover website
• “USA: the world's most expensive rewrite sold” - note dated February 21, 2008 on the Stamplover website
• “Canadian stamps with errors put up for auction at Regency-Superior” - note dated February 23, 2008 on the Stamplover website