POSTAL SCIENCE

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If you can't trust the facts on stamps, is it any wonder your letter takes a
week to get across town?

The U.S. postal service's first airmail stamps, issued in 1918, appropriately
depicted an airplane. Through a printing error, however, the Curtiss Jenny
appeared upside down on one entire sheet of 100 stamps. Philatelists like Ira
Zweifach prize such stamps, and just one "Inverted Jenny" has a catalog value of
more than $200,000 today.

Past president of The Collectors Club, the preeminent organization,of stamp
collectors, Zweifach specializes in "mistake stamps," which include the samples
from his personal collection on these pages. These stamps' errors are not in
spelling, dates, or face values, but in the artwork itself. Each contains a
scientific error, a physical impossibility, or a commonsense goof. Can you
detect the mistake?

STAMP OUT ERRORS

1. United States, issued July 4, 1973. One stamp in this block of four shows a
physical impossibility.

2. Luxembourg, 1935. This stamp was issued to aid the International Fund for
Professional People.

3. United States, 1944. The scene commemorates the "golden spike" ceremony on
the completion of the transcontinental railroad.

4. Switzerland, 1909. The boy holding the crossbow is supposed to be William
Tell's son.

5. Monaco, 1956. The portrait of U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower was part of
a set to publicize the Fifth International Philatelic Exhibition in New York.

6. Italy, issued in 1957 to publicize a campaign for safe driving.

7. Jaipur, India, 1931. Seven horses lead the chariot.

8. St. Kitts-Nevis, 1903. Columbus peers through a telescope on his voyage of
discovery.

9. France, 1933. A woman sows seeds as the sun sets (or rises).

10. Germany, 1919, from that country's first set of airmail stamps.

11. Saudi Arabia, 1949. Another airmail stamp.

12. Monaco, 1947. Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of The Collectors Club's past
members, examines his stamp collection. This was part of a set commemorating
Monaco's participation in the Centenary International Philatelic Exhibition in
New York.

ANSWERS

l. On the upper right stamp, part of the rigging on the three-masted British
frigate passes behind the crescent moon.

2. The name of the newspaper, Journal, is printed on the back page.

3. The smoke from the train blows in one direction, the flag in the other.

4. The crossbow's string is on the underside of the stock. A corrected version
was issued in 1910.

5. Eisenhower's coat buttons with the right lapel on top. the way a woman's
jacket buttons, instead of left on top, like a man's coat.

6. The red light is at the bottom of the traffic light, rather than at the top,
as is the international convention.

7. The seven horses pulling the chariot have a total of only four legs.

8. The telescope wasn't invented until the seventeenth century

9. Judging from the way her hair and dress are blowing, the woman is sowing
seeds into the wind.

10. With no propeller and a minuscule vertical stabilizer at its tail, this
plane would never be able to fly.

11. There are no propellers on this prejet age airplane, and the tail fins are
not realistic. The plane would crash.

12. His left hand has six fingers.