Rea28 Beer Stamp Bungle

I was perusing some of the early revenue proofs that have been digitized by the National Museum of American History and learned an interesting bit of trivia. This beer stamp proof of REA28 actually has two misspellings! Even more remarkable is that these errors were never caught and actually went into production. Let's see if anyone can spot one or both.

"Eagraved" and "Priniing."

Jim

Quick work! Good eyes, Jim, you found one. But "Engraving" is actually correctly spelled. I'll post a closer view so others can get a better look...

Hi Greg,

Are you perhaps referring to the "z" shaped character after "Bureau,"?

Jim

McCullough

I guess that looks like a "C" rather than a "G"

Is it this guy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_McCullough

These old timers all sort of look the same to me, so I wasn't sure...

Jim

And Randy found the second one -- well done! The error is the name spelling of the man in the portrait. Hugh McCulloch was the Secretary of the Treasury at the time and his name ended up "McCullough" on the stamp. And since McCulloch was the chief administrator of the agency that oversaw the Bureau of Engraving & Printing, you'd think that would be a familiar name to the letter engravers.

But just as ironic is the BEP misspelling it's *own* name! If you look closely at the Bureau imprint you'll notice that the last word is "PRINIING". This error also made its way onto REA21 and REA29 of the 1871 series. Quite amazing that these typos slipped past considering the Bureau's high standard of quality control. But to be fair, the lettering is so small that no one else noticed until years later.

I encourage you to take a look at some of the other revenue proofs available for study on the NMAH website. There's some beautiful stuff on view, including a number of Persian Rugs. http://americanhistory.si.edu/colle...:objectgroup

I gotta hurry up and list mine on eBay as major errors! I'm sure somebody will bite!

After looking carefully at the serifs I suspect that it was a broken T rather then an actual misspelling.

As a tangent, McCulloch's name is correctly spelled here, although a few years after his death. He got his banking start in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Gorgeous check, John!

Some years later, the BEP had another chance to get his name right. They did a better job this time.








That's quite possible. The tips of the "T" are slightly more visible on other stamps. Still, you'd think they'd pay closer attention to their own imprint.