The Postal Service has issued a “forever” stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty — the one in Las Vegas.

The post office, which had thought the Lady Liberty “forever” stamp featured the real thing, found out otherwise when a clever stamp collector who is also what one might call a superfan of the Statue of Liberty got suspicious and contacted Linn’s Stamp News, the essential read among philatelists.

But the post office is going with it.

“We still love the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway,” said Roy Betts, a spokesman. Mr. Betts did say, however, that the post office regrets the error and is “re-examining our processes to prevent this situation from happening in the future.”

The service selected the image from a photography service, and issued rolls of the stamp bearing the image in December. This month, it issued a sheet of 18 Lady Liberty and flag stamps. Information accompanying the original release of the stamp included a bit of history on the real Statue of Liberty. Las Vegas was never mentioned. The whole mess was exposed by the stamp magazine, which this week ran photographs of both statues.

The rot begins when officials bull-headedly stick with their mistakes instead of falling on their swords in disgrace. That there should be anything at all accidental about a postage stamp (a kind of currency) is horribly worrisome.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Friday, April 15th, 2011 at 10:30 am.