Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Chatter > General Discussion


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 08-07-2008, 06:16 AM   #1 (permalink)
MSD
The sky calls to us ...
 
MSD's Avatar
 
Super Moderator
Location: CT
Red White Red White Red White Red Whete Red White Red White Red White ... oops

FOXNews.com - Collectors Discover Flag Stamp Has 14 Stripes - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

Quote:


NEW YORK — The devil, as they say, is in the details.

So when an astute stamp collector recently discovered that one of the Old Glorys in the U.S. Postal Service's "Flags 24/7" series appears to have 14 stripes, it was bound to send a wave of excitement through the philatelic community.

"Is there any icon better-known to Americans than their own flag?" said Fred Baumann, a spokesman for the American Philatelic Society. "This is something somebody should have caught along the way."

The stamp in question, "Night," was released by the Postal Service on April 18 as part of a series of four stamps painted by Maryland artist Laura Stutzman depicting Old Glory at sunrise, noon, sunset and night.

Stutzman's 42-cent stamp shows the flag flying proudly before a waxing moon, but instead of six white stripes, Old Glory has seven.

Stamp collector Tony Servies wrote about the extra stripe this week on his blog StampsofDistinction.com after reading a June 30 letter to the editor about the extra bar in Linn's Stamp News.

"The first thought is, this is an anomaly," Servies said. "This is something that probably should be corrected; whether they do or not remains to be seen. If they do correct it, of course, it’s an error stamp or a reissued stamp that would potentially make it a little more valuable."

Officials from the Postal Service acknowledged Wednesday they were aware of the error.

"It’s been noticed," Roy A. Betts, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service said, adding that 3.75 billion stamps in the series have been printed to date. The series is the Postal Service's primary mail-use coil and is available in rolls of 100, 3,000 and 10,000.

Stutzman said her four paintings for the "Flag 24/7" series were "examined three times by the Stamp Advisory Committee, that I know of, and then art directors look at it; everybody looks at it."

The painter is no stranger to stamp controversy. Her husband, Mark, created the 1993 Elvis stamp. His "Young Elvis" design beat out "Old Elvis" in a vote by the American public. "A stamp really catches a lot of attention," she said.

David E. Failor, a manager of Stamp Services for the Postal Service, said the extra stripe came from a design flaw. A white line, he said, was added to provide definition to the flag.

"It was not part of the original artwork," Failor said. "Normally we would send the change back through our fact-checking process. In the case of this change we didn't do that so the mistake was not recognized. It was brought to our attention after the stamps were issued."

As far as errors go, Baumann said this one, albeit shocking, is pretty insignificant in the world of collecting.

Real value, Baumann said, comes when an error is due to a production flaw, affecting only a few stamps, such the pane of 100 "Inverted Jenny" stamps from a 1918 run that showed a Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" airplane misprinted upside-down.

"Most security printers are very hawkeyed about keeping an eye out for that kind of thing, routing it out and destroying it," he said. "It’s usually shredded and then incinerated; they’re very thorough because if these things do escape, just a few of them, they could be worth a great deal of money."

In 2005, a single "Inverted Jenny" stamp sold for $525,000.

The Postal Service plans to let the "Flags 24/7" series stay on the market, extra stripe and all, and will continue to be printed until the next stamp-price increase.

"They will remain on sale as is," Betts said. "But we acknowledge the error."
Fortunately, when I screw up at work, I can't piss off more than about a dozen people unless I blow out someone's eardrums or they're epileptic. Usually, the biggest problem is that someone can't figure out to push a button that says "PC" when they want the PC do be projected. Someone screwed up this one and the whole country is going to hear about it, a bunch of over-patriotic jackasses will probably make a big deal about it (I'm surprised Fox News didn't already try,) and the misprinted stamp will be too widely circulated to become a collector's item.

I remember typing up Student Government documents when I was in school and having other people read it over to find the little things; after reading it over so many times I didn't even notice a missing or extra punctuation mark, and the ubiquitous extra space from deleting words wasn't even noticeable with variable-width characters and fonts. Makes you wonder how many people assumed that an American flag was something where a blatant error would stand out enough that they didn't need to check the details.

I guess in the end it's a reminder that everyone still makes mistakes, and it's funny when those people are the government.
MSD is offline  
 

Tags
american flag, flag, misprint, mistake, oops, philatelic, philatelist, philatelists, postal service, red, stamp, stamp collector, stamps, whete, white

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 01:37 AM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360