tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50314110975970642612024-02-19T05:02:11.003-08:00phillatillyRob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5031411097597064261.post-53268107470075573172008-08-09T05:44:00.000-07:002008-08-09T05:52:02.331-07:00Collectors Discover Flag Stamp Has 14 Stripes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9QgqNuaoIq6vsUpIuD7ZZmTG5H_JctnKLXlUOuS2x6Z-oO6K1onVr1ENEs8NiKE-r3HUgPXGFk2R7Z7GNbtmXIJgUTlyt7g2_KtANjwCdQeIin9FjCNyoJihG_wvaCDPL6yCbBwza_KYj/s1600-h/061080608stamp.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9QgqNuaoIq6vsUpIuD7ZZmTG5H_JctnKLXlUOuS2x6Z-oO6K1onVr1ENEs8NiKE-r3HUgPXGFk2R7Z7GNbtmXIJgUTlyt7g2_KtANjwCdQeIin9FjCNyoJihG_wvaCDPL6yCbBwza_KYj/s400/061080608stamp.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5232499676011073826" /></a><br /><br /><br />NEW YORK — The devil, as they say, is in the details.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Stutzman's 42-cent stamp shows the flag flying proudly before a waxing moon, but instead of six white stripes, Old Glory has seven.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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."<br /><br />Officials from the Postal Service acknowledged Wednesday they were aware of the error.<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />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."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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."<br /><br />As far as errors go, Baumann said this one, albeit shocking, is pretty insignificant in the world of collecting.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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."<br /><br />In 2005, a single "Inverted Jenny" stamp sold for $525,000.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"They will remain on sale as is," Betts said. "But we acknowledge the error."Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0