Share any errors in the artistic design of stamps

iomoon · Post by **iomoon** » 02 May 2008 08:05

Not errors in printing, but rather, errors made by the artist of the stamp.

In the Italian stamp below, the bust is not that of Archimedes, but rather Archidamos III of Sparta.

Plus, the screw on the screw is going the wrong way.

(Credit to Jeff Miller of NYU)

And why was Italy issuing a stamp depicting a Greek scientist?

mrboggler · Post by **mrboggler** » 02 May 2008 08:43

Great idea for a thread iomoon.

one of our members at our club, gave a display a few years back on exactly that subject,and it was amazing the number of goofs that had been made over the years.

hope others join this one with some scans of cockups,

Ron.

The Pom · Post by **The Pom** » 02 May 2008 08:59

I seem to recollect that the bloke shown on the 1947 Australia Newcastle 2½d Red is the wrong person.

iomoon · Post by **iomoon** » 02 May 2008 10:07

Mount Huascarran in Nepal.

Someone screwed up their geography.

It is in Peru - only off by about 160 degrees of longitude.

waroff49 · Post by **waroff49** » 02 May 2008 17:16

I think AUSTPOST did the same thing, for AAT stamps on ships of the Antartic. From memory the Nimrod was not the Nimrod at all.

S.S. Morning..........................................S.Y.Nimrod

waroff49 · Post by **waroff49** » 03 May 2008 03:38

There is a similar boo-booo, on another thread. PNG got the wrong bird for their endangered birds set.

https://stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5986&p=5346231#p5346231

kedwaven · Post by **kedwaven** » 03 May 2008 07:06

Here is something I came across a while ago, lots of errors

https://www.edbmb.net/stamps/index.html

The man on the stamp has 6 fingers on his left hand!

Stewie1980 · Post by **Stewie1980** » 03 Feb 2013 03:06

Time for a bump after almost 5 years!

Azerbaijan 1993
The name 'Haxcivan' on the map is incorrectly spelled. It must be 'Naxçivan'.

Central African Republic 1961
The star on the flags is shown white, but it must be yellow.

Iraq 2000
Saddam Hussein's last name is incorrectly spelled as 'Hussien'.

steevh · Post by **steevh** » 03 Feb 2013 20:03

iomoon wrote:

And why was Italy issueing a stamp depicting a Greek scientist?

Archimedes used to live in Syracuse, Greek at the time, but now part of Italy.
Plus the Romans got a lot of their culture from Greece.

jjarmstrong47 · Post by **jjarmstrong47** » 03 Feb 2013 20:27

In 1951. Czeslaw Slania was allowed to engrave his first full stamp celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Paris Commune. The stamp was to honour the part played by General Jaroslaw Dabrowski but the picture he was given to work from was of the composer, Henryk Dabrowski who is shown on the stamp. Slania would have been devastated by the mistake but already his talent as an engraver was blooming. Polak’s name still appeared on this stamp, followed by Slania’s but the entire stamp was engraved by Slania under Polak’s supervision.

jjarmstrong47 · Post by **jjarmstrong47** » 03 Feb 2013 20:31

Perhaps the Italians were feeling guilty. This from Wikipedia:

Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed.

bardhi · Post by **bardhi** » 03 Feb 2013 22:06

There was no Greece and/or Italy during those times.. Projecting the reality of our times and concepts in a time that dates back more than 2000 years ago, leads to extreme misunderstandings.

Finchley Chris · Post by **Finchley Chris** » 04 Feb 2013 03:02

I have recently seen mention in the UK press of a big controversy in Canada over the use of the image of the "wrong" maple leaf on recent Canadian banknotes - apparently showing the leaf of the Norwegian Maple rather than the native Canadian Sugar Leaf Maple. (Sorry admin., I don't have any pictures.

)

Has there been any controversy over stamps - or do they show the "correct" leaf?

Global Administrator · Post by **Global Administrator** » 15 Mar 2014 10:07

Does anyone have a photo of the Canada one?

Stam Errors · Post by **Stam Errors** » 15 Mar 2014 10:58

This is my main interest.
I hope to find lots of great examples and look forward to your help...and maybe I can help you out as well.

jaywalker · Post by **jaywalker** » 15 Mar 2014 13:19

Good to meet you at the Canberra Show, "stam errors". I'll let you explain the error on your avatar image...

"one and a half" from Norfolk Island - the half is an error in the gutter...

"Guard" House

"Norfold" Island

There is also an error on the backing paper of the 1974 UPU issue, with a misspelling of AUKLAND:

(corrected for later self-adhesive releases)

jaywalker · Post by **jaywalker** » 15 Mar 2014 13:41

One of my favourite philatelic books - Stamp Oddities by Monty Wedd:

The material in this book was adapted from Stamp Oddities cartoons which originally appeared in "Stamp News" (an Australian Publication). Unfortunately, Monty Wedd died recently. I'll bring the book down to the Canberra Stampshow...

Not sure if Dilston Falls counts as an "error":

jaywalker · Post by **jaywalker** » 15 Mar 2014 13:53

Of possible interest to readers of this thread:

Stewie1980 · Post by **Stewie1980** » 24 Apr 2015 16:43

Angola 1999, African Basketball Championship for men

One '0' too many in the denominations. Correct denominations would be 1.500.000.00 (1,500,000 Kwanza and 00 centimos)

phrag99 · Post by **phrag99** » 24 Apr 2015 21:33

Anyone thinking of developing an interest in this topic should consider obtaining this book:

Unfortunately, it's long out of print, but occasional copies do come up for sale. It was published by the National Philatelic Society (of London) in 1979 so there is no ISBN number.

There are 11 chapters over 174 pages of close typescript, with titles such as "Spelling and grammatical errors", "Denomination errors" and even "Commemoration of Non-events". Thousands of errors are included.

Khep · Post by **Khep** » 25 Apr 2015 03:25

Finchley Chris wrote:I have recently seen mention in the UK press of a big controversy in Canada over the use of the image of the "wrong" maple leaf on recent Canadian banknotes - apparently showing the leaf of the Norwegian Maple rather than the native Canadian Sugar Leaf Maple. (Sorry admin., I don't have any pictures. )

Has there been any controversy over stamps - or do they show the "correct" leaf?

Global Administrator wrote:Does anyone have a photo of the Canada one?

First - a Toronto Globe and Mail article about the banknotes:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/20-bills-maple- ... le7519375/

Hmmm . . . banknotes mentioned above, and some stamps (and coins) mentioned in the article linked below, are either showing a "wrong" species for Canada (by some standards), or questionable in scientific accuracy.

Here are two of the 2003 stamps mentioned in the article I quote below, followed by a 1971 (6 c) stamp correctly showing the samara of a Sugar Maple.

I don't know how much 'controversy' there was over this. I didn't search any further than the interesting web article by U of Montreal professor, Jacques Brisson.

No doubt, the Sugar Maple species was the original inspiration for the national symbol (as early as 1700!) But after the western provinces joined confederation, the accepted / "official" model became a "stylized" maple leaf -- since all provinces have at least one native species, but the Sugar Maple species is native only in eastern Canada.

"The sugar maple: a mistreated emblem" by Jacques Brisson.
https://www.aucoeurdelarbre.ca/en/thematics-texts/thematics-texts-details.php?id=26

On December 19, 2003, Canada Post issued six stamps, each displaying a "national symbol". Except that: three of these stamps pictured Norway maples!

On the 80¢ and $1.40 stamps, the inferior leaf tips and rounded shape of the buds are characteristic of the Norway maple, a species native to Europe. It is true that one almost needs to be a botanist to see the difference.

However, on the 49¢ stamp, the mistake is obvious: in addition to the leaf, the stamp displays the flattened fruit (samara) with widely spread double wings that clearly distinguishes the Norway maple from all other species.

Compare this image to that of the sugar maple, on the 6¢ stamp from 1971, and you'll see the difference. The previous year, the Royal Canadian Mint had issued a $5 collector coin, proudly displaying the samara characteristic of the Norway maple.

tgallowa · Post by **tgallowa** » 01 May 2015 08:32

There's got to be a million of these: sailing ships with flags and pennants fluttering aft.

Khep · Post by **Khep** » 01 May 2015 11:21

I've gone into some detail about this in another thread: https://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=62914

But perhaps it really all belongs in this one.

Canada's 1967 15 cent 'Centennial' definitive stamp. Unitrade (Scott) #463. The seven highest values of the series are showing landscapes by Canadian artists. The 15 cent is titled "Bylot Island", and shows a unicolor image of a painting by Lawren Harris.

- stamp titled "Bylot Island"

- "Greenland Mountains", ca.1930, oil on canvas, Lawren Harris.

Bylot Island is certainly part of Canada -- off the northern tip of Baffin Island. However, the painting depicted on the stamp is titled "Greenland Mountains". The National Gallery of Canada, who purchased the painting in 1936, apparently didn't realize the mistake in labelling until sometime in the 1990's. I've checked out other similar paintings from Harris's only trip north, plus a couple of "by the way . . . " references to the stamp in arts articles online (see thread above). I don't think there's much room for doubt that the 15 cent definitive actually shows a painting of Greenland, not Canada.

Eli · Post by **Eli** » 02 May 2015 01:48

The Kingdom of Yemen issued in 1969 a set of 8 stamps entitled "save the holy places" including stamps depicting Dead Sea scroll written in Hebrew two millennia ago:

Here is one of the stamps depicting Dead Sea scroll from Qumran caves:

Years ago, when I received the stamp, I knew that the image on this stamp is inverted. But, even when I inverted the stamp, I still couldn't recognize the writing and I thought the designer designed meaningless letters only to fill the image.

Only when I inverted the stamp vertically and than horizontally I realized that the stamp depicting a page from "Habakkuk Commentary" book written in Hebrew in the 1st century BC, and I recognized the exact section from the book. this scroll is still exhibited in the Israel museum in Jerusalem:

I learned that in that years Yemen designed its stamps in foreign countries, mainly Hungary, hence their are many design mistakes in Yemenite stamps.

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 08 Sep 2015 22:45

Hi Eli - very nice pick up and I particularly like how you identified the real scroll in the Jerusalem museum and have attached a photo of such.

Hi phrag99 - I managed to pick up the book Errors in postage stamp design on ebay for less than $20 including postage to Australia. Just amazing the sheer number of errors!

This is getting me interested in going down this thematic path....

kushti · Post by **kushti** » 09 Sep 2015 02:01

Here's a thing...every single stamp issued by the Orange Free State incorporates a design error introduced by the engravers at de la Rue.
When they first commissioned stamps in 1868, they sent de la Rue a sketch of a wild olive tree, which was native to the region.
The engravers assumed it to be an orange tree, what with it being the Orange Free State, and decided it would look better with oranges. So they added 19 of them.
The authorities of the OFS obviously thought what the hell, as they stuck with this hybrid tree through the introduction of revenue stamps, postal stationery etc, for 35 years...

psestamp · Post by **psestamp** » 09 Sep 2015 05:53

Taiwan is not part of China.

Someone was afraid of getting shot for this error (true story)

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 27 Sep 2015 20:58

Well I have started my collection...

INCORRECT LOCATION

"In the evening of the 26th (of January) the colours were displayed on shore, and the Governor, with several of his principal officers and others, assembled round the flagstaff, drank the King's health, and success to the settlement, with all that display of form which on such occasions is esteemed propitious, because it enlivens the spirits, and fills the imagination with pleasing presages."

The stamp illustrates the raising of the flag by Governor Phillip on the shoreline in 1788. The picture is that of the painting by Algernon Mayow Talmage entitled The founding of Australia by Capt. Arthur Phillip, 26 January 1788.

However, the closest point to where it is estimated that the flag was first raised on 26 January 1788 is in Loftus Street, Sydney (near Customs House Square, Circular Quay). The following map shows the location as within the red square, which obviously isn't on the shore.

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 27 Sep 2015 21:01

INCORRECT TITLE

The wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton took place on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey in London, England.

The illustration is of a photograph taken after the wedding ceremony. It is thus protocol that Catherine Middleton became known as, her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Cambridge.

But the stamp has simply used Miss Catherine Middleton.

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 27 Sep 2015 21:07

Morse Code

Morse code is a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment. The International Morse Code encodes each character (letter or numeral) with a unique sequence of dots and dashes. The operators translate the indentations marked on the paper tape into messages. The letters of a word are separated by a spaces.

The picture shows the receiver’s armature as it marked the paper. But the message provided makes no sense. The second line reads “MLB”:
_ _ . _ . . _ . . .

dave222 · Post by **dave222** » 27 Sep 2015 23:22

King Tut wrote:Well I have started my collection...

INCORRECT LOCATION

"In the evening of the 26th (of January) the colours were displayed on shore, and the Governor, with several of his principal officers and others, assembled round the flagstaff, drank the King's health, and success to the settlement, with all that display of form which on such occasions is esteemed propitious, because it enlivens the spirits, and fills the imagination with pleasing presages."

The stamp illustrates the raising of the flag by Governor Phillip on the shoreline in 1788. The picture is that of the painting by Algernon Mayow Talmage entitled The founding of Australia by Capt. Arthur Phillip, 26 January 1788.

However, the closest point to where it is estimated that the flag was first raised on 26 January 1788 is in Loftus Street, Sydney (near Customs House Square, Circular Quay). The following map shows the location as within the red square, which obviously isn't on the shore.

I'm not sure you have this one right.

Circular Quay seemingly has a fair bit of reclaimed land where a natural bay was transformed in to a quayside where ships could dock. This would mean that Loftus Street is now further inland, or rather the shore is further out in to the bay. Also, looking at old maps of the area, Loftus Street appears to be the location of a fair sized inlet that extends inland all the way to Bent Street .

So, the ship in the picture could be in the inlet and the flag could have been raised on the present day location of Loftus Street.

This is of course ignoring the fact that the original artist may have used artistic license to improve the aesthetics of the painting.

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 03 Oct 2015 14:32

Spelling Error

Every stamp in this 1970 Christmas issue of Canada mispelt the word Noël

I received this set courtesy of Hutch.

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 03 Oct 2015 14:37

Inverted design

Australia Post to celebrate the national broadcaster's 50th anniversary produced an issue showing the ABC's emblem. But they inverted it.

Look at the left diagonal - here is how it should have appeared:

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 03 Oct 2015 21:36

INCORRECT LATIN

This 1970 4d Christmas stamp shows an illustration from the De Lisle Psalter with the phrase 'Gloria in Excelsis Deo' wrongly rendered 'Excelris'.

The error was caused by the long ago restoration of the manuscript itself which converted a long 's' into an 'r' in the manuscript

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 03 Oct 2015 21:41

WRONG NOUN

This Australian 1950 8 1/2d stamp showed Djungarai (colloquially known as"One Pound Jimmie"). It is labelled "Aborigine". 'Aborigines' is a plural noun for the native inhabitants of a country, the correct word for a single inhabitant being 'aboriginal'.

The incorrectly derived singular 'aborigine' is widely accepted and is nowadays common use.

Eli · Post by **Eli** » 04 Oct 2015 01:33

Four stamps were issued by Laos in year 2000 to celebrate the entering to the third Millennium:

In Laos, cars drive the right lane but in the lower left stamp the designer drew the cars drive in the left lane:

I think this error was caused since the stamps were designed and printed in Thailand, a country where cars drive in the left lane of the roads.

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 10 Oct 2015 12:18

Reversed numeral

Although I don't have this stamp, the image is courtesy of Eli's thread Kingdom of Laos Stamps 1951 - 1975 in the Share forum

The second Lao numeral should be facing the other way

Wucky100 · Post by **Wucky100** » 11 Oct 2015 00:32

Hi Everyone,

Had to add this one, In 2010-2011 the US of A issued a definitive pair picturing the Statue of Liberty on one side and the U.S. Flag on the other, easy concept, you would think!

Well the "Art Director" and "Photographer" had other ideas, the flag picture was easy, after all you can"t drive for a mile without seeing a thousand of them, and the hard part... getting on a plane and heading to New York Harbor to a little island called "Liberty Island" for, wait for it.... "The Statue of Liberty" you might find this hard to believe, but this is where it lives, now lets take that one photo that will glamorize it for a stamp to be used by the Billions!!!!! Fly back home, submit our invoice's and artwork, then head of to Hawaii for a well deserved break........ heaven.... easy money!

Until a brave member of the public discovers this......

On the right is the Statue of Liberty, on the left is the fibreglass Disneyesque replica in front of the "New York New York" casino in Las Vegas, now look at the issued stamp in the centre, the nice fresh face of "Lady Liberty" has had Botox..... they used this "Replica" statue for the image on the stamp........

So now the stamp is referred to as "Replica of Statue of Liberty, Las Vegas"

At least the USPS owned up to the mistake.

(I wonder how much the invoices were for and if they got paid)

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 11 Oct 2015 12:17

Hi Wucky100 - that is funny...or just sad. Maybe they referenced the movie Despicable Me when Gru was telling the minions that they had stolen the Statute of Liberty...from Las Vegas.

Misrepresentation of coat-of-arms

When reproducing a coat-of-arms, there is a colour convention to be followed. That is, colours are indicated by appropriate shading, and the wrong kind of shading is equivalent to using the wrong colour.

With the coat of arms of Great Britain the colours are on the left, but shading on the stamp indicates something completely different.

King Tut · Post by **King Tut** » 11 Oct 2015 12:28

Courtesy of the discussion in the Ask a question thread... I have extracted the key aspects from that discussion

Incorrect signals

Lets look at the signals...

In Britain, trains pass on the left, so the Golden Arrow is at least on the correct track. All else being equal, semaphore signals are usually placed to give the driver the best possible view, which is on the left as the driver views it – however, although unusual, it is possible for the signal relevant to the oncoming Golden Arrow to be on the right as the driver sees it.

The arm pointing upwards at 45 degrees is seen from the rear; the driver would see a red arm with a white vertical stripe whereas we see a white arm with a black stripe.

The other (horizontal) arm presumably applies to trains travelling in the opposite direction. The colour is correct, but for the train on the left track going into the background the signal arm should have been pointing left in the direction of that track.

Additionally, this signal appears to be a lower quadrant two-position semaphore, manually controlled from a signal box. Therefore the left arm ought to be facing left, not right, and the right arm ought to be down at 45 degrees, not up.

This would indicate "stop" for the left track and "proceed" for the right track. It was not until automatic electric signalling was introduced that you had upper quadrant three-position signals.

kemese1 · Post by **kemese1** » 11 Oct 2015 17:41

A stamp from a set issued for Ghadames - a French military territory in current Libya. The designer of the stamp identifies the object as the 'Croix d'Agadem' or the cross of Agadem. It actually is the cross of Agadez - a symbol used widely by the Tuareg in the Sahara Desert.

Michel, Scott and SG dutifully list this set as the Cross of Agadem set. Only Yvert has noted the error and lists the set as the Cross of Agadez set.

Eli · Post by **Eli** » 13 Oct 2015 02:52

One of the most famous stamp errors - a camel with three legs:

This stamp is one of a set entitled "From Chad to the Rhine" issued on June 6, 1946 for use in French Indo-China depicting famous battles of the Free French army and the allies during WWII. Designed and engraved by Albert Decaris. Stamps with similar design were issued for use in other French territories: French equatorial Africa, French West Africa, Cameroon, Somali Coast, Guadeloupe, Guyana, French India, Madagascar, Martinique, New Caledonia, SPM and Wallis & Futuna.

rossi · Post by **rossi** » 13 Oct 2015 03:38

This stamp was issued on 3 April 1961:

But the borders of Peru were not designed properly so it was then replaced by this:

Stewie1980 · Post by **Stewie1980** » 13 Oct 2015 04:19

It looks like the designer used a very old map of Peru, before they conquered/annexed the eastern part of Ecuador.

psestamp · Post by **psestamp** » 13 Oct 2015 05:11

Issac Newton

though no good pictures exist.

But seriously?

Go to art class - Geez.

I'm feeling let down here - fellow Polskies.

Seriously?

https://previews.123rf.com/images/brandonhot/brandonhot1301/b ... -Photo.jpg

ROCK STAR!!! Wow - Put this guy in GQ

rossi · Post by **rossi** » 13 Oct 2015 07:13

Stewie1980 wrote:It looks like the designer used a very old map of Peru, before they conquered/annexed the eastern part of Ecuador.

I've to say that I didn't know anything about the Peru / Ecuador territorial dispute:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Ecuadorian%E2%80%93Peruvian_territorial_dispute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Protocol

This stamp was issued by Ecuador on 1961:

The Pom · Post by **The Pom** » 16 Oct 2015 01:42

In this case, the stamps are OK, but can anyone tell me the error on the cover?

dave222 · Post by **dave222** » 16 Oct 2015 01:57

The Pom wrote:In this case, the stamps are OK, but can anyone tell me the error on the cover?

I take it we can plainly see the error on this tiny scan? Or is it something much more obvious?

The Pom · Post by **The Pom** » 16 Oct 2015 02:15

dave222 wrote:
I take it we can plainly see the error on this tiny scan? Or is it something much more obvious?

Yes, the error is as clear as day.

dave222 · Post by **dave222** » 16 Oct 2015 02:25

The Pom wrote:
dave222 wrote:
I take it we can plainly see the error on this tiny scan? Or is it something much more obvious?
Yes, the error is as clear as day.

Should the title be "Microchromosomes"?