Oops: New stamp features wrong Statue of Liberty

The squat Las Vegas replica of Lady Liberty, inadvertently featured on a "Forever" stamp, has different hair and more "distinctly defined" eyes than the New York original.

(Image credit: USPS)

last updated 8 January 2015

The image: It looks like Las Vegas has trumped New York. Last December, the United States Postal Service began selling a new "forever" stamp bearing a photo of the Statue of Liberty. But they got the wrong Lady Liberty, according to a stamp enthusiast magazine that exposed the mix-up this week. The photo in question depicts a replica Statue of Liberty (with a subtly different hairstyle) at Las Vegas' New York-New York casino. "We still love the stamp design," says a Postal Service spokesman, though he concedes that the Postal Service is "re-examining our processes to prevent this situation from happening in the future." Three billion of the stamps have been printed, and they will remain on the market.

The reaction: Ha. "As if further proof were needed that New York is not the center of the universe," say Kim Severson and Matthew Healey in The New York Times. Yeah, "the huddled masses would be sorely disappointed," says Nick Carbone at TIME. All jokes aside, says Jeanne Sager at The Stir, I'm glad that the Postal Service will keep the stamps in circulation, rather than wasting money and paper to reprint. "Deciding to make do with what you got is an example of old-fashioned American ingenuity at its best. It could be a good lesson for United States Congressmen to follow."