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Mistaken Identity

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.

Ireland’s postal agency, An Post, had just put a new stamp on sale recently when it took
it OFF sale... because of a design error.

According to Linn’s Stamp News, the issue would have honored the Irish Citizen Army,
volunteers who defended union members from clashes with police during a strike in 1913.
The design shows a unit of this militia, with a closeup of a co-founder, supposedly
Captain Jack White.

But historians say it’s someone else.

News reports say the stamp was on sale less than 10 minutes before An Post pulled it, but
at least one sheet of 15 is now in collector hands. These stamps with a face value of about
12 dollars were sold by a dealer for more than four thousand!

Design errors like this happen in other countries, too. Twenty years ago, the U-S Postal
Service issued a black cowboy stamp... but showed a picture of his BROTHER. And an airmail
stamp said the Grand Canyon was in Colorado. It’s in Arizona.

What makes them valuable isn’t the mistake, it’s that they were removed from sale.... after
some had already been sold.

I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting,
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.

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