Recalled Legends Of The West Series

The most infamous stamp error in United States history was unveiled in December 1993. The Legends of the West stamps was sure to be an extremely popular issuance, but nobody expected them to be as popular as they became.

One of the stamps in the series honored a celebrated African-American cowboy, Bill Pickett. He was credited with the invention of steer wrestling which is otherwise known as bulldogging.

Stamp artist Mark Hess designed the stamp using a famous photograph that had been published in several magazines. The problem was that the picture was not actually of Bill Pickett, but was instead of his brother Ben Pickett. The Pickett family informed the USPS that they had made a serious error in January 1994, after the stamps were released.

The stunned USPS announced a recall and destruction of all of the stamps. The second problem that arose was that five million stamps had already been shipped out to hundreds of post offices around the United States.

Once the error had become national news, the USPS discovered that there were 183 panes of the incorrect stamps that had already been sold to the public. In an attempt to off-set the price of reprinting the series, the USPS decided to sell, by lottery, 150,000 of the faulty panes.

If you are interested in buying this very collectible recalled sheet of 20 set, visit http://www.stampcenter.com/ for more information. They are even offering, for a limited time, a $25 discount on any of their US Classic stamps.