US 1869 15c 'Landing of Columbus' Invert

America's first two-color stamps

The 1869 Pictorial Issue was a break with every U.S. stamp before it. Until then American stamps showed portraits of dead statesmen. The new set, ten denominations from 1 cent to 90 cents, put a post rider, a locomotive, a steamship and two historical scenes on the nation's mail. The 15-cent value carried the second of those scenes: a tiny engraving after John Vanderlyn's 1847 painting Landing of Columbus, commissioned for the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, which shows Columbus coming ashore on San Salvador on October 12, 1492.

The four highest values, 15, 24, 30 and 90 cents, were the first bicolored stamps in U.S. history. The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum notes that the 1869 set was the first and the last issue to use multiple colors until 1918, one reason it is counted among the highlights of the classic period of American stamps. Each color needed its own pass through the press, and every sheet had to go through twice.

The National Bank Note Company won the contract in 1868 over Butler & Carpenter, which had bid lower and fought the award; the museum says a congressional commission upheld the decision. Contemporary circulars cited by philatelic historian Calvet M. Hahn show the contract was signed December 12, 1868, and a Post Office memorandum he quotes says the issue began March 19, 1869. The high values were printed in sheets of 100 rather than the 150 used for the low values.

The public disliked the set: its small, nearly square format, its pictures and its poor gum all drew complaints. Replacements went on sale in April 1870, little more than a year after the pictorials appeared. That short life is the reason so few of the high values survive.

How Columbus landed upside down

Printing a two-color stamp meant registering two impressions on the same sheet. On the 15-cent the blue vignette was printed first and the brown frame second, according to the National Postal Museum. When a few sheets were fed into the press the wrong way round for the second pass, the frame landed upside down around the picture. Collectors call it an inverted center, but the museum points out that, strictly, it is the frame that is inverted.

Registration was a problem even on normal sheets. The first version of the 15-cent, Type I, had a single thin line around the picture, and misaligned centers were obvious. In May 1869 the Post Office began issuing a redrawn Type II with extra frame lines and a small diamond above the vignette; the museum cites the specialist Lester Brookman's view that the extra lines helped disguise misalignment. Every known invert is Type II.

The National Postal Museum's figures put production at about 200,000 Type I and 1,238,940 Type II stamps. Hahn's reconstruction from Post Office reports and the printer's ledger sheets gives 1,476,700 printed and 1,438,840 issued for both types together. These figures come from different methods and do not match exactly.

Two discovery stories and a lunch-money purchase

The first printed report of any 1869 invert appeared in the December 20, 1870, issue of the American Journal of Philately, published in New York by J. Walter Scott. It said that after a few hundred sheets of the 15- and 24-cent stamps had been delivered, a few stamps on each sheet were found with the picture inverted. The account cannot be right as written, a 2016 summary of the census notes: all known 15-cent inverts are Type II, which was not issued until May 1869. Hahn records an even earlier catalog listing by Moens of Belgium in February 1870, so sources disagree on which notice came first.

The early specialist John N. Luff told a different story. A New York dealer named David H. Anthony bought the first sheet of inverts, sold one to a collector named Ramus (or Rasmus) and exchanged the rest at the post office for normal stamps. Hahn found city directory entries placing Anthony at 21 Nassau Street and then 62 Liberty Street, next door to Scott's office, and argued the first discovery may have been a Type I invert that no longer survives. That remains a theory.

The best-documented early find is the original-gum copy. Paul Lichtenstein, a young clerk at the banking firm of Hermann R. Baltzer and William G. Taaks at 50 Exchange Place in Manhattan, was sent to buy 25 of the 15-cent stamps for the firm's mail. He saw that the pictures were upside down and asked whether the stamps were valid. The clerk at the window assured him no one would notice. Lichtenstein used his lunch money to buy one copy for his own collection, and the rest went out on the firm's letters. His son, Alfred F. Lichtenstein, became the more famous collector of the family.

From a clerk's album to the great collections

Hahn traces the Lichtenstein copy in detail. A family friend persuaded the elder Lichtenstein to sell it, and it soon brought $285 in a Staten Island Philatelic Society auction, a strong price at a time when used 15-cent inverts were selling for $30 to $70. It went to Europe and then to the American collector George H. Worthington, who paid $1,200. When Worthington's collection was dispersed in August 1917, it brought $4,100; Alfred Lichtenstein had bought the Worthington collection privately and chose to put it in the sale. At lunch around that time, father, son and the old family friend agreed that the friend would give more than $700 to charity to cover interest on the original bargain.

The stamp next appeared in the sale of Arthur Hind's collection in 1933, where it brought $7,000 from the dealer Elliott Perry. It then passed through a private collection to Josiah Lilly, was sold from Lilly's collection in February 1967 to the Weill brothers, and reappeared at auction in 1982, where an agent for the Weills bought it again. In October 2013 it led a six-stamp collection of U.S. inverts offered in New York, described as the finest of three recorded unused examples, with an estimate of $1.2 million.

The first 15-cent invert known to have sold at auction went much more cheaply. Hahn records that J. Walter Scott's own collection was sold in London on March 18, 1872, and that its 15-cent invert, centered to the left and bottom, went for 36 shillings, about $9.

Of the two unused copies without gum, one sold at auction in New York on February 9, 2008, for $757,100 including a 13 percent buyer's premium. It carried a Fine certificate but showed faint soiling in the side margins. The sale report noted that one of the other two unused copies had recently been offered privately at an asking price of $2.5 million. The 2008 report also said this stamp, a 24-cent and a 30-cent invert had last been bought in 1974 as part of the Charles A. Schaefer collection.

How many exist and how to tell them

A 2016 summary of the census maintained by a New York stamp firm records one 15-cent invert with original gum, two unused without gum and 97 used, for 100 in all, plus three examples of a separate double-impression variety, Scott 119c. Later published counts of used copies rose to 101 and then 103 as more were recorded. Two used copies are in institutions: the Tapling Collection at the British Library and the Miller Collection at the New York Public Library.

Sound copies are rare. Different editions of the census describe only 9, 12 or 14 used copies as confirmed sound, and note that almost all have perforations touching the design on at least one side. The 15-cent is described as at least as hard to find in sound condition as the more expensive 24- and 30-cent inverts.

A genuine invert must be the Type II design, with the diamond above the picture and the heavier frame lines. Normal stamps are on hard wove paper with the G grill, a small pattern of embossed points found only on the 1869 issue, and are perforated 12. The 1875 reissues have no grill. Most high-value 1869 stamps went on mail to foreign countries: the 15-cent paid the single rate to France through December 31, 1869, and the 15-cent domestic registry fee, and one census entry is the only copy with a French transit marking.

Inverted printings were also made later, outside the post office. Hahn describes proof impressions with inverted centers pulled for Dr. James Petrie after 1879 and sold to the Earl of Crawford around 1900. Proof sets with inverted centers on card, including a 90-cent value that was never issued inverted, exist in an edition described as 100. They are proofs, not postage stamps, and are not the error.

The numbers

Issue date

Pictorial Issue began March 19, 1869; Type II 15-cent issued from May 1869

Printed (all 15-cent 1869)

About 200,000 Type I and 1,238,940 Type II (National Postal Museum); 1,476,700 printed and 1,438,840 issued (Hahn)

Known inverts

1 original gum, 2 unused without gum, 97 used (2016); later counts list 101 and 103 used

Paper

Hard wove paper, G grill

Perforation

12

Sheet size

100 stamps

Colors

Brown frame, blue vignette

Timeline

1. 1847

   John Vanderlyn completes Landing of Columbus for the Capitol Rotunda; it becomes the model for the 15-cent vignette.

2. Dec 12, 1868

   The National Bank Note Company's contract for the new issue is signed, after a fight over the lower bid of Butler & Carpenter.

3. Mar 19, 1869

   The 1869 Pictorial Issue begins, according to a Post Office memorandum.

4. May 1869

   The redrawn Type II 15-cent reaches post offices; every known invert is of this type.

5. 1869

   Bank clerk Paul Lichtenstein buys 25 inverted stamps for his firm and keeps one, the only copy now known with original gum.

6. Apr 1870

   Replacement stamps go on sale, ending the pictorials' brief run.

7. Dec 20, 1870

   The American Journal of Philately publishes the first report of the 15- and 24-cent inverts.

8. Mar 18, 1872

   J. Walter Scott's collection is sold in London; its 15-cent invert brings 36 shillings, about $9.

9. Aug 1917

   The Lichtenstein copy sells for $4,100 in the dispersal of George H. Worthington's collection.

10. 1933

    The same copy brings $7,000 in the sale of Arthur Hind's collection.

11. Feb 1967

    It sells from the Josiah Lilly collection to the Weill brothers.

12. Feb 9, 2008

    An unused copy without gum sells at auction in New York for $757,100.

13. Oct 9, 2013

    The original-gum copy leads a collection of six U.S. inverts offered in New York, estimated at $1.2 million.

14. 2016

    The census records 100 copies: 1 with original gum, 2 unused without gum and 97 used.

15. Oct 2024

    A used copy described as one of the top four or five in existence sells for $15,000.

The world in 1869

• Apr 6, 1869

  The American Museum of Natural History is founded in New York.

• Mar 18, 1869

  Dmitri Mendeleev presents his periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

• May 10, 1869

  The first transcontinental railroad is completed at Promontory, Utah, with the driving of the golden spike.

• Sep 24, 1869

  Black Friday: the Fisk-Gould gold scandal sets off a financial panic in the United States.

• Nov 6, 1869

  Rutgers beats Princeton 6-4 in the first game of college football.

• Nov 17, 1869

  The Suez Canal is inaugurated in Egypt.

• Dec 10, 1869

  The Wyoming territorial legislature gives women the right to vote, the first such law in the world.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, US 1869 15c 'Landing of Columbus' Invert is number 18 of 100 in the stamps entries of the FLOAT 100. 82 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (26 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The National Postal Museum notes that the 15-cent's vignette was printed first, so on the error it is technically the frame, not the center, that is upside down.
• When the bank clerk asked whether upside-down stamps were valid, the post office clerk told him no one would notice the difference.
• When the unused Lichtenstein copy brought $285, probably around 1890,, used 15-cent inverts were selling for $30 to $70.
• The first published report of the error cannot be right as written, because it puts the invert on a frame type that had not yet been issued.
• A 1917 lunch between the Lichtensteins and the old family friend who had bought the stamp ended with the friend agreeing to give more than $700 to charity as interest on the bargain.
• Only a handful of used copies are sound; almost all have perforations touching the design.