From: USA
Description: Unsealed, but COMPLETE set, with cardboard box with an inside liner showing an image of the original 24¢ Inverted Jenny airmail stamp. A 48-page book is also included. Also features a USPS certificate of authenticity, mint souvenir sheet of six stamps and a first-day postmarked souvenir sheet, as well as four small panes resembling printer’s proofs consisting of panes with a printed pale yellow background and intaglio red stamp frame; a pale yellow background with the intaglio blue inverted Jenny airplane vignette; a pale yellow background with both the red frame and the blue vignette; and a printed souvenir sheet selvage with the printed pale yellow background for the stamps in the center.
These prooflike items are on ungummed face paper, the same paper used to print the stamps, but without the self-adhesive layer. Faint impressions of unprinted intaglio elements can also be seen in the paper.
Additionally, a “die wipe” from the production run was included. The Postal Service described this item: “In the intaglio process, ink is forced into recessed (engraved or etched) areas of the plate, and excess ink that remains on the surface of the plate is wiped off prior to making the final impression (the die wipe).” These, of course, were manufactured for the set, but are impressive looking!
Although the edition was supposed to be 1,900, USPS ended up selling only 1,100 sets of these ( only10x the number of the non-invert sheetlets!), with the remainder presumably destroyed. This one is #379. Truly beautiful and scarce!