Tall tales, or true ?





Democracy comes at a high price in Florida

Voter mails in ballot with stamp that may be worth US$500,000



Saturday, November 11, 2006



MIAMI - A Florida voter may have unwittingly lost hundreds of

thousands of dollars by using an extremely rare stamp to mail an

absentee ballot in Tuesday's congressional elections, a government

official said yesterday.

The 1918 Inverted Jenny stamp, which takes its name from an image of a

biplane accidentally printed upside down, turned up on Tuesday night

in Fort Lauderdale, where election officials were inspecting ballots

from parts of south Florida, said John Rodstrom, the Broward County

Commissioner.

Only 100 of the stamps have ever been found, making them one of the

top prizes among philatelists.

Mr. Rodstrom, a member of the county's canvassing board, said he

spotted the red-and-blue Inverted Jenny on a large envelope with two

stamps from the 1930s and another dating to the Second World War .

The nominal value of the four vintage U.S. Post Office stamps was 87

cents, he said.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, I know that stamp. I've seen that stamp

before,' " said Mr. Rodstrom, 54, who dabbled in stamp collecting as

a boy.

"I'd forgotten the name. I just remembered there was a stamp with an

upside-down biplane on it and that it was a very rare, rare stamp."

He said he did not examine the envelope's postmark, but it had no

return address.

As such, the ballot was disqualified because it gave no clue as to the

identity of the voter.

Election officials have been too busy certifying the outcome of

Tuesday's race to have the stamp authenticated, Mr. Rodstrom said.

However, a block of four of the stamps sold for almost US$3 million

last year.

Mr. Rodstrom said the one that turned up on Tuesday night could fetch

about US$500,000 for Broward County at auction.

"It's now government property," he said.

A postmark on a stamp usually would hurt its value, but Mr. Rodstrom

said the story behind this one -- plus the fact it is joined by other

old stamps on the envelope -- might actually increase its worth.

The commissioner said he doubted the stamp would ever be handed over

to someone claiming to have mailed it inadvertently.

"It would be hard to prove. I guess you would have to say it was a

person who had Alzheimer's," he said.





"yoyo" wrote in message
...
I did some more research, and established that this stamp is nearly
identical to a stamp recently sold on ebay by a known forger. The
watermark - 8:30 PM on May 29 - was the same.