The Official Stamp Honoring the Statue of Liberty Shows a Fake Statue of Liberty From a Vegas Casino

The U.S. Postal Service REALLY can't catch a break:　On December 9th last year, they released a new stamp honoring the Statue of Liberty. Now, four months later, a stamp collecting magazine called "Linn's" has filled them in on a little problem with it. Instead of using a photo of the REAL Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the Post Office accidentally used a photo of the FAKE Statue of Liberty outside the 'New York, New York' casino in Las Vegas.

The real Statue of Liberty is a lot bigger, but you can't tell that from the photo they used, since it just shows her head.　And the differences you CAN see are small, but legit.

The statue in Vegas has more sharply defined facial features, different hair, and is a different color:　The real statue is green because it started out as copper and turned green over time, but the Vegas statue is green because they made it green.

The Postal Service says they selected the photo from a stock photography service and didn't realize that it wasn't the original statue.

Now, as you might've heard, because of email, the Postal Service doesn't have any money any more.　They certainly don't have the money to reprint the stamps . . . they already printed THREE BILLION with the Vegas statue.

So . . . they're just going to go with it.　A spokesman from the USPS decided to lie and tell us all, quote, "We still love the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway."

Here's a photo of the stamp, and a comparison between the replica and the real Statue of Liberty:

(New York Times)