The 24¢ stamp was issued on March 19, 1869, but its earliest known use is April 7, 1869. The largest known unused multiple is a beautiful block of nine, which is unique, while there are several used blocks of four. Covers with this stamp are quite rare, and there are about 80 known surviving covers with either the 24¢ stamp used as a single stamp by itself, or with other stamps to make up a higher rate for overseas usage.
There are a handful of domestically used 24¢ covers making up the 15¢ registry rate and the three times the 3¢ domestic postage for a letter weighing between 1 oz. and 1-1/2 oz. Foreign usages include covers to such places as Fremantle, Western Australia, the Dutch East Indies, Mauritius, Spain, Japan, Argentina and St. Helena. It should be noted that more 24¢ 1869 covers (approximately 16) were sent to Peru than to any other destination. One such cover recently sold in New York City, and had on it a strip of three 24¢ stamps and a pair of 15¢ stamps, paying the triple 34¢ rate to Lima, Peru, and was part of the Davis correspondence, a famous correspondence spanning almost three years, from Port Chester, New York, to Lima, Peru. An example of the Davis correspondence can be seen above.
THE INVERT
The inverted center stamp was caused by a printing error, sheets were inadvertently placed in the wrong direction before the blue color of the vignette was applied.
