The new Statue of Liberty stamp from the U.S. Post Office works as a big embarrassment today as it has been discovered that the stamp depicts the wrong statue, according to Time Magazine.
The Statue of Liberty that the artist used in creating these U.S. Postal stamps is the replica of Lady Liberty that is seen in Las Vegas. The U.S. Post Office has already printed 3 billion first class Statue of Liberty stamps to commemorate going green and protecting the environment. The stamps promote actions such as composting, recycling, planting trees and saving water.
The mistake was first noticed and reported by Linn’s Stamp News. The Statue of Liberty Stamps have been on the market since December.
The U.S. Postal Service spokesman, Roy Betts, said that the stamps will not be pulled from the market. The Statue of Liberty appears on the first class 44 cent “Forever Stamps.”
These stamps can be used forever and even if the cost of a stamp goes up again, their 44 cent face value will be recognized as the same as new postal rate if one should go into place.
The Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas, which is the statue depicted on the U.S. postal stamp, has a rectangular patch on the center spike. The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor does not. The Vegas statue has very different hair and eyes that are more sharply defined than the original Statue of Liberty.
How ironic that the Statue of Liberty used to depict these green ways comes from a city where everything is disposable and energy conservation is far from being practiced.
This is not the first time that the U.S. Post Office has made a mistake on stamps, according to Hess Designs. In the “Classic Collections,” that depicted greats from the early west, along with famous Indian Chiefs put a picture of a man’s brother on the stamp instead of the famous man.
When Bill Pickett’s image was supposedly printed on a postage stamp and it was later discovered that the picture was that of his brother Ben. This was the first time in 125 years that the Post Office made the mistake of putting a wrong person’s image on a postal stamp.
The stamps for this “Classic Collection” were recalled, but not before some smart collectors put some away. The sheet of stamps that continued the Bill Pickett stamp started to sell for thousands of dollars.
The U.S. Post office decided to make this fair for everyone and then held a lottery. 150,000 people won the chance to buy the stamps for $5.80, which was the face value of the “Classic Collections” set that the Bill Pickett stamp was in.
This “Classic Collections” sheet of stamps that contains the Bill Pickett stamp sells today for $150 - $200 according to the Hess Design Works website.
The Post Office is not recalling the Statue of Liberty stamp, so the price will not go sky high as it did when the Bill Pickett stamp was recalled, but in decades to come, who knows?
Reference: Time Magazine, Hess Design Works