What's wrong here?

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/08/a-new-42-cent-s.html

What's wrong here?
Doug Stanglin
August 06, 2008

See anything amiss with the stamp in the lower right corner?

A new 42-cent stamp featuring the American flag against an evening sky appears to have 14 stripes -- one too many, FoxNews.com reports.

The stamp in question, "Night," was released by the Postal Service on April 18 as part of a series of four stamps painted by Maryland artist Laura Stutzman depicting Old Glory at sunrise, noon, sunset and night, the news site reports.

Stamp collector Tony Servies observes in his blog StampsofDistinction.com this week that for 190 years, the flag has always consisted of 13 red and white stripes in a specific pattern. There are 7 red stripes and 6 white stripes. Because of the odd number of red stripes, that has meant a red stripe at the top and bottom of the flag, he writes.

That also means, he concludes, this partially blocked flag, which has a white stripe at the bottom, has at minimum 14 stripes and potentially 15 if the traditional pattern was maintained.

FoxNews.com quotes Roy A. Betts, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, as saying, "It’s been noticed." He adds that 3.75 billion stamps in the series have been printed to date.

It quotes David E. Failor, a manager of Stamp Services for the Postal Service, as saying the extra stripe came from a design flaw. A white line, he says, was added to provide definition to the flag and was not part of the original artwork.

"Normally we would send the change back through our fact-checking process," he is quoted as saying. "In the case of this change we didn't do that so the mistake was not recognized. It was brought to our attention after the stamps were issued."

So have the owners of the flawed design hit a goldmine, philatelically speaking?

Says stamp collector Servies: "If the stamp design is ultimately changed, the current design, issued in a much smaller quantity than originally planned, may possibly increase in value. Only time will tell."