41 cents face value, cost to USPS: $3.5m

Errors in the printing of postage stamps have cropped up in this blog before, not least because they are usually spotted early doors and so their rarity adds extra value. This is most certainly not the case here.

When the United States Postal Service began looking for the subject of a new ‘Forever’ stamp in 2010, it was hard to get away from the face of New York’s most iconic monument. They sourced an image from a library in Texas but ,unfortunately, it wasn’t the Liberty.

The image was of a much smaller statue in Las Vegas outside New York, New York (where else!) and designed by Robert Davidson. In 2013 he sued for infringement of copyright stating that his version was “more feminine” and some people even found her more “sultry” and even “sexier” than her original inspiration. The court found in his favour and he was awarded $3.5m.

USPS made light of the error, celebrating the heightened interest in stamps which the case had caused but they have every right to see it as a landmark. It is, by some way, the biggest postage stamp error in history with almost 5 billion imprints.

Image credits: left, Wikipedia – right, Flickr