Women's Rowing - 4 Designs

So I just received my recent order from the 'Salt Cave' and was looking at the Women's Rowing Issue and for the life of my 30-45 minute look-see I could only see 2- designs of the stated 4-design issue. Then the light dawned. In both the Red Team & Blue team there is one stamp with a cut off oar from either the back rower (red team) and the front rower (blue team). Both rowers are pulling from the port side. I would have thought maybe the design was the coxswain & rower and the second design was 2-rowers, I will note that the 8-woman crew repeats on both teams. If the USPS had changed headgear or hair style on the other six rowers they could have had 8-designs on the issue (or even 10 if the design included the coxswain.

NOTE: The rowers are actually pulling on the RIGHT side as the coxswain would be facing forward. The rowers are pulling from THEIR left side.

Don

It is weirdly confusing when you first look at it. But both teams have the requisite four oars in the water on each side of their boat. The red team is just starting its stroke while the blue team has just finished its stroke. If you locate the perforations, you can see the four different stamps -- with all the rest being repeats. But it takes awhile to see that, as you found out!

The cheapest and most ridiculous design I have seen in a long time! I hope they did not pay the designer too much for this poor "art"work!


Peter

Worse than the new dollar values??

Don: Are you suggesting that the coxswain's knees on the blue team is somehow included on the stamp? I looked at my sheet & the vertical perfs are cut such that the knees are outside the design frame of the stamp. Does the perf cut further left on your sheet?

No, my arrows probably only serve to confuse and are not well placed. Sorry.
Don

I confuse easily .. my short term memory seems to be shortening & the confusion lengthening.... especially when trying to figure out recent US issues. I am amazed at how many correct answers I get on Jeopardy because I collect stamps.. (did I just hijack my own post??)

I ordered the "set of 4" first day cover pack directly from USPS.com.

On the red team stamps one has an oar in front of the front rower

On the blue team stamps one has an oar showing behind the last rower and you can see the yellow bottom of the oar.

Took me about 10 minutes of looking to figure this out.