Rare Misprint Stamps Sell for Nearly $3 Million

A group of four flawed, early U.S. airmail stamps, originally priced at 24 cents each, sold at auction for $2.97 million on Wednesday.
The 1918 stamp depicting a Curtiss JN-4H airplane was the first U.S. airmail stamp. Only a single flawed sheet of 100 stamps showing the airplane flying upside down was ever sold.
The original sheet of "Inverted Jenny" stamps was sold for $24 to William Robey on May 14, 1918. Robey sold the sheet a week later for $15,000. News of the error spread rapidly, embarrassing postal officials, who already faced skepticism over the experimental airmail program.
The sheet has since been split up and prices have rocketed to more than $500,000 for a single stamp.