US 1979 $1 'CIA Invert'

America's light

In 1971 the newly created United States Postal Service took the unusual step of hiring a private Philadelphia design firm, Kramer, Miller, Lomden, and Glassman, to devise a new series of everyday stamps about American culture and history. The result, the Americana series, began on October 31, 1975, the eve of the bicentennial year, with a Liberty Bell stamp in booklet form. By the time the last design appeared in 1981 there were 25 of them, in sheets, coils and booklets, each with an inscription wrapping around two sides so that a block of four forms a framed picture. The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum notes that the series was not popular and was the shortest-lived definitive series of the twentieth century.

The $1 value, issued July 2, 1979, belongs to a group of four stamps about sources of light in American history. It shows a rush lamp and candle holder: in the eighteenth century a rush dipped once in wax and held by pincers on a stand gave light to settlers. The inscription reads "America's Light Fueled by Truth and Reason."

The higher values of the series, from 50 cents to $5, were printed in two separate steps, and that is what made an invert possible. For the $1 stamp, the tan background, the yellow candle flame and its reddish glow were printed first by offset lithography on a sheet-fed Miller press. The partly printed sheets then went through a second, sheet-fed intaglio press, the I-8, which added the dark brown candleholder and lettering. Each sheet held 400 stamps and was later cut into four panes of 100.

How one sheet turned around

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing had been burned by inverts before. After the 1962 Dag Hammarskjold error, it required paper suppliers to slice a small corner off every sheet destined for multicolor jobs that passed through the presses twice. A sheet put back in the stack the wrong way around would then stick out at one corner and be caught.

In June 1985 a bureau official, acting without the authority to do so, told the paper supplier it could stop clipping the corners to save money. Between the two printing steps, pressmen routinely pulled sheets from the stack to check the quality of the offset work and put them back. Somewhere in that routine one sheet went back rotated 180 degrees. Because sheets were fed into the intaglio press gum side up, the operator had no visual clue, and without the clipped corner nothing stood out. The brown candleholder and lettering were printed upside down relative to the flame.

Accounts of the bureau's later investigation give slightly different production figures. One summary of the report says the bureau printed 70,390 sheets of 400 (28,156,000 stamps) in the 1985 printing that produced the error; the Smithsonian's record gives 70,397 sheets produced between November 1 and 15, 1985, and says the sheet examiners checked them between November 13 and 18 and found no inverted sheets. When a plate block from a second error pane surfaced in 2023, it showed the intaglio plate number, 40971, which a stamp journalist used to date the error to between November 4 and December 5, 1985.

The bureau's report concluded that there was no sign of intentional wrongdoing by any employee or of collusion with anyone who later held the stamps. Officials had at first worried that the error, which turned up close to the bureau's own plant in the Washington area, might have been created and smuggled out on purpose; the fact that the buyer had paid face value over a post office counter ruled that out.

The pane in the McLean post office

According to the account published in the stamp press, on March 27, 1986, Steve Lambert, then a CIA employee, bought a partial pane of 95 of the $1 stamps at the McLean, Virginia, post office substation for use on agency mail. Five stamps, a horizontal strip that included the one with the plate number in the margin, had already been sold to other customers and were never seen again.

Accounts of what happened next vary in detail. The Smithsonian records two versions: in one, the error was noticed only after some stamps had been put on outgoing mail; in the other, published as the official account, nine stamps were used before anyone noticed, although a later museum memo says none were. In the widely repeated version, an employee who needed a $1 stamp noticed that the candleholder and words were upside down. Nine employees, seven men and two women, bought normal $1 stamps with their own money, swapped them in for the inverts, and kept one error each. One stamp was badly damaged when it was torn from the pane.

The group showed the find to an Annandale, Virginia, stamp dealer, Ike Snyder, who sent them to Jacques C. Schiff Jr., a New Jersey specialist in error stamps who reportedly told them to "get here fast" and offered to pay their airfare. Asked to name a price, they asked $100,000; Schiff is reported to have answered, "That's way out of line; I'll give you $25,000." On April 2, 1986, at his office in Ridgefield, New Jersey, their representative accepted, on condition that Schiff keep the source secret. Schiff wrote nine checks of $2,777.78 each for the block of 85, and the damaged stamp was handed over as a gift.

Schiff sold the first single, position 85, at the AMERIPEX stamp exhibition in Rosemont, Illinois, on May 28, 1986, and the remaining block of 84 was displayed there in the Court of Honor. A few months later, a stamp company headed by Don Sundman and two partners bought 50 of the inverts. For more than a year the public story was that a small business in northern Virginia had found the stamps.

A records request, and an agency investigation

Sundman wanted to know where his stamps had come from. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and when its 35-page report arrived, with names blacked out, it came with a cover letter from the Central Intelligence Agency. The connection was published in the stamp press in the September 7, 1987, issue, and the story then made front pages and network news across the country.

The CIA reviewed the matter and concluded that the stamps, bought with government funds, had been agency property. It referred the case to the Justice Department's public integrity section for possible charges of theft or misappropriation of government supplies; the department declined to prosecute. According to one dealer's account, the agency told the employees to surrender their inverts or face up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Sources disagree about how it ended for the nine. The Smithsonian's record says one man had lost his stamp, four were fired for failing to comply and four returned their stamps and kept their jobs. A 2023 stamp-press account says four, including Lambert, were fired for insubordination, one said he had lost his stamp and was retained, and four, including both women, surrendered theirs. A dealer's account instead says three resigned and one was fired, and that Lambert was the employee who claimed to have lost his copy, which he offered to sell about twenty years later.

The four stamps the agency recovered, positions 86, 97, 98 and 100, were transferred to the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum on November 1, 1990. They joined an example Sundman had already donated. Many writers argued at the time that the agency had been made whole the moment its employees replaced the errors with normal stamps; the agency did not agree.

How to recognize one

On a normal stamp the flame and its circular glow sit at the top center, with the brown candleholder rising up to meet them. On the invert, the brown candleholder, candle outline and all of the lettering are upside down, while the tan background, candle and flame are printed normally. Because the margins of the 400-stamp press sheet were not equal on both sides, the inverted printing was also displaced, which is why the flame and glow appear in a corner instead of at the top center.

Collectors have asked whether the stamp is a true invert or stolen printer's waste. A longtime stamp columnist answered that it is a completed print job, sold intact over a post office counter, with the two printings inverted relative to each other, and that the bureau itself accepted it as a true invert.

The offset printing on the reversed sheet shifted enough to leave an unprinted strip, the gutter that would have separated two panes, on some stamps. On the discovery pane it appears as a narrow white vertical band near the right edge, on the stamps in the tenth column. On the plate block from the second pane, the stripe is a wide band running into the wide left margin. Because the stamps were perforated on an L perforator, each stamp's perforation pattern can show which pane and position it came from.

Of the original 95, one was damaged when it was torn from the pane. A 2026 auction description said 93 sound examples from the first pane reached collectors.

A second pane, and the market

For decades the McLean pane was believed to be the only one. In 2018 a dealer offered a collector an intact plate strip of 20 from a second error pane for $500,000 at the American Philatelic Society and American Topical Association show in Columbus, Ohio. The strip had belonged to error dealer Jack Nalbandian, who, according to his son-in-law, may have obtained it from Schiff's stock in the late 1990s. On April 26, 2023, a plate block of four cut from that strip appeared for sale online at $199,000, was pulled two days later, and returned on May 1 at $225,000. It is an upper-left position with a wide white stripe, so it cannot be the missing plate block from the McLean pane.

That discovery confirmed long-standing speculation that more than one of the four panes escaped the bureau: on top of the 95 stamps from the McLean pane, there are now 20 from a second. The bureau was never able to confirm whether it had destroyed any panes of inverts. Unverified reports over the years included one from a source who claimed to have a missing pane stored in a Las Vegas facility.

Prices have moved in a wide band. A never-hinged single brought $18,400 at auction in December 2006. Another, with a 2010 certificate, brought $11,500 at a later sale. A block of four sold for $60,000 in 2004, and a second block, one of only three known, brought $71,875 at auction in New York in December 2015. In June 2026 a single graded 85 sold for $9,500 against a published estimate of $10,000 to $15,000. A leading catalog values a single at $17,000, printed in italics to signal an item that trades infrequently.

Its fame rests as much on the story as on the scarcity: one columnist wrote that owning one gives a collector bragging rights second only to owning an Inverted Jenny.

The numbers

Normal stamp issued

July 2, 1979

Face value

$1

Catalog number

1610c (brown engraving inverted)

Printing

Offset lithography on a sheet-fed Miller press, then engraved brown on a sheet-fed I-8 intaglio press

Sheet format

400 subjects, cut into four panes of 100

Paper

LT-46 paper, delivered without the usual clipped corner

Perforation

Perforated on an L perforator; gauge not verified here

Error plate

Intaglio plate 40971

Known quantity

95 from the discovery pane; a plate strip of 20 from a second pane

Printing run

70,390 sheets (28,156,000 stamps) per one summary of the bureau's report; 70,397 sheets per the Smithsonian

Timeline

1. 1971

   The Postal Service hires a Philadelphia design firm to create a concept for a new definitive series on American culture and history.

2. Oct 31, 1975

   The Americana series begins with a Liberty Bell stamp in booklet form.

3. Jul 2, 1979

   The $1 Rush Lamp and Candle Holder stamp is issued.

4. 1981

   The last Americana stamp is issued; the series totals 25 designs.

5. Jun 1985

   A bureau official, without authority, tells the paper supplier to stop clipping corners off press sheets.

6. Nov 1985

   The error is printed from intaglio plate 40971 during a run of about 70,000 sheets of 400.

7. Mar 27, 1986

   A CIA employee buys a partial pane of 95 at the McLean, Virginia, post office substation for agency mail.

8. Apr 2, 1986

   Nine employees, having swapped in normal stamps, sell 85 inverts to error specialist Jacques C. Schiff Jr. for $25,000 and give him the damaged 86th.

9. May 28, 1986

   Schiff sells the first single at AMERIPEX in Rosemont, Illinois; the block of 84 is shown in the Court of Honor.

10. Aug 11, 1986

    The first press report says the errors were bought by a small business in Fairfax, Virginia.

11. Sep 7, 1987

    After Don Sundman's Freedom of Information Act request, the stamp press reveals that the buyers worked for the CIA.

12. Nov 1, 1990

    Four recovered stamps (positions 86, 97, 98 and 100) are transferred to the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum.

13. 2004

    A block of four sells for $60,000.

14. Dec 2006

    A never-hinged single brings $18,400 at auction.

15. Dec 2015

    A block of four, one of three known, brings $71,875 at auction in New York.

16. 2018

    A plate strip of 20 from a second error pane is offered privately for $500,000 at a stamp show in Columbus, Ohio.

17. Apr 26, 2023

    A plate block from the second pane is listed for sale online at $199,000; it is relisted May 1 at $225,000.

18. Jun 27, 2026

    A single graded 85 sells for $9,500 at auction.

The world in 1979

• Jul 2, 1979

  The same day the $1 Rush Lamp stamp was issued, the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin was introduced.

• Nov 4, 1979

  The Iran hostage crisis began when radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

• Jan 28, 1986

  The space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members.

• Jun 4, 1986

  Jonathan Pollard pleaded guilty to espionage for selling U.S. military intelligence to Israel.

• Jul 5, 1986

  The Statue of Liberty reopened to the public after an extensive refurbishing.

• Oct 11, 1986

  Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, for arms talks that broke down.

• Nov 3, 1986

  A Lebanese magazine reported secret U.S. arms sales to Iran, the start of the Iran-Contra affair.

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 1979 $1 'CIA Invert' is number 49 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 (32 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The stamp's inscription reads "America's Light Fueled by Truth and Reason."
• The error happened because a bureau manager tried to save money by having the paper mill stop clipping a corner off each sheet, the very safeguard introduced after the 1962 Hammarskjold invert.
• The dealer who bought the block of 85 paid with nine separate checks of $2,777.78.
• The CIA link became public only because a stamp dealer filed a Freedom of Information Act request, and the bureau's report arrived with a CIA cover letter.
• A stamp columnist has explained the agency's need for ordinary postage: recruiting mail in envelopes announcing the CIA would not suit people expected to work undercover.
• The five stamps sold from the pane before the CIA bought it included the one with the plate number; none has ever been reported.
• It was the first U.S. stamp issued with a major design element upside down since the 1962 Dag Hammarskjold invert.