Post office uses Vegas Liberty statue for stamp by accident

As if trying to make a postmodern statement on authenticity, the U.S. Postal Service's recently released .44 cent "forever" stamp bears an image of a Las Vegas replica of the Statue of Liberty, instead of a photo of the real deal.
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The whole thing was a case of mistaken identity, however. The Post Office inadvertently used a snap of the 14-year-old replica, which presides over Las Vegas' Strip, instead of the original statue---which has welcomed poor and huddled masses into New York City for more than 125 years--as its model for the stamps. The Vegas statue has slightly different hair, a less-stern facial expression, and a plaque adorning the center spike of her crown.

An astute stamp collector and Lady Liberty "superfan" discovered the mistake, the New York Times reports, and the mix-up was first reported in Linn's Stamp News.

But despite the slip-up, the "forever" stamps, which have been in circulation since December of last year, will not be changed.

"We still love the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway," Roy Betts, a spokesman for the post office said in a statement. That's good news, since USPS has already printed three billion of them.

A columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal gloated that the Vegas statue, which is half the original's size, had "one-upped her more famous relative."

(Stamp, courtesy of USPS. Vegas replica in 2007 draped with an NBA All Star jersey: AP)

Source: Yahoo