Legends Of The West, Scott 2870

The scarcer Legends of the West sheet, Scott 2870, with the wrong Bill Pickett. Although it apparently is worth more enclosed in its original blue package, I removed mine back then because I feared the material wasn't inert. For some odd reason, though, I also saved the form letter from USPS that was enclosed with my order.

This item always interested me. An error that the USPS "recalled" and yet sold to customers.

The error was identified by Bill Pickett's great-grandson, Frank Phillips Jr., before the official release. The problem was that over 5 million sheets had been shipped to post offices across the country, and 183 sheets had been sold to the public before the scheduled release date (some as early as Dec.1993).

The few sheets in the hands of the public were being sold at astronomical prices, the USPS decided to do something it had never done before: sell a limited number of the recalled and unissued stamps to the public. In an attempt to satisfy collectors' demands and offset the $1.2 million printing costs, the USPS reached a compromise with the Pickett family who were promised that none of the error sheets would be sold and announced a controversial decision to sell 150,000 recalled sheets by lottery.

I won one of these in the lottery. I think the cost was $9. Sold it at auction for about $235 shortly after receiving it. What do they go for these days?

Around $40 on ebay.

I bought one of these error sheets just recently for about $40. I'd imagine some people who paid hundreds of dollars for one awhile back may feel a little silly now.

I thought the whole situation was a little embarrassing for the Postal Service but I understand why they wanted to devalue the few rare error sheets that had gone out and make back their costs. In some similar situations, though, they printed their errors in huge quantities so every collector who wanted one could acquire them, but not this time which I think was unfortunate. However, in the long run, doing what they did does seem to have saturated the market enough to keep the price of the error sheet modest enough for many collectors -- like me.

For me, owning this error sheet was completely non-essential and I was prepared to leave that page in my album blank permanently since I considered the error sheet kind of silly and not exactly a postal issue for postal use but more like a souvenir sheet to sell to collectors. With the price falling over time, however, I figured I'd get one, after all. To me, the odd thing is that they reprinted the entire sheet where all but one stamp was perfectly okay, but I suppose printing technology dictated doing that and doing otherwise -- such as reprinting only the error stamp -- would still have left the few entire error sheets very valuable.

I finally added the Ledgends of the West #1278 to my collection about two years ago. I bought my #1278 for $36 with a normal and error sheet set. The fact that the USPS issuing only 150,000 and sells of 183 making a total of 150,183 total sheets. The error sheet would be more expensive than they are. That indicates to me a lot of collectors do not add this sheet to their collections. We all know they are more collectors of United States stamps than the supply would accommodate. I think it is highly under valued. It is also a modern stamp and a lot of collectors have cut off dates that do not require then to have the #1278. More than likely they are just not added to collections. This is a mistake as someone will want to add this to their albums and the supply will dry up one day. On the other hand they maybe more out there in the wild then we are lead to beleive.

You can apply a multiplying factor to the 150,000 because unlike an error that escapes into the wild these were SOLD as errors. People knew immediately what they had and these were not used for postage or unknowingly discarded. You can pick a number but this is more like the equivalent of one million being issued. Right now, the price of $40 seems just right specially since the average price is driven by what people are willing to pay and $40 is that amount. The only thing driving people to pay the $40 is this item being from the US. If you had a true error with such a large population in any other Country you couldn't give it away. I have pretty spectacular errors of Russian stamps with populations in the 10,000 or less range that are $5.

I have one of the error sheets and 2 of the reprints. Not hard to come by.

The Scott catalogue gives the issuing date of only the revised sheet, but not of the original sheet with the error. So I wonder if the error sheet was actually ever issued to the public or was it caught before it was issued?

If it was issued, I suppose the real rarity would be the single error stamp used postally on cover dated before the error was discovered or the reprinted sheet was available. If it was dated later, I'd think it might be purely philatelic so not as "pure". Would such a thing exist? I've never seen one.

On 30 January I posted:

The money is in having a sheet cancelled before the recall. Not many of those available.

Has anybody ever seen one?

The PF certified a single used in February 94. 579776.