When is the Statue of Liberty not the Statue of Liberty?

Reuters headlines, "Oops! Statue of Liberty Stamp Shows Las Vegas Lady."

According to the news agency, "After printing 3 billion copies of a new postage stamp bearing an image of the Statue of Liberty, the United States Postal Service received a strange question from a stamp collector."

Reporter Jonathan Allen asks, "Did postal officials realize the photograph was not of the famed statue in New York Harbor, but of a less-feted fiberglass and Styrofoam replica outside a Las Vegas casino?"

Apparently, they did not.

Roy Betts, a USPS spokesman, is quoted in the article as saying, "The USPS became aware of what it is calling a 'mischaracterization' about a month ago."

Allen writes, "Betts partly blamed Getty Images, the stock photography company that supplied the image, for ambiguously labeling the image in its database. While the image is simply titled  'Statue of Liberty,' the keywords attached to it include 'Nevada' and 'Replica Statue of Liberty - Las Vegas,' although Betts say this information was added only after the USPS raised the point with Getty."

The USPS said it will correct the catalog information connected with the stamp and live with the error, and has no plans to issue a recall according to the report which concludes with, "The USPS has previously issued 23 other stamps featuring the Statue of Liberty, and officials said all of them show the actual statue -- they think."

News of the mix-up was first reported in Linns by Jay Bigalke. Good goin' Jay!

To read the entire article, click here.

To hear the National Public Radio interview with Jay regarding this story, click here.