Stamp Error

It took millions of years for nature to carve out the Grand Canyon and no time at all for the U.S. Postal Service to misplace it.

One of the most spectacular examples of erosion anywhere in the world, the Grand Canyon was carved by the Colorado River but is actually in Arizona.

In early 2000, the Postal Service was in the process of printing an order for nearly 101 million stamps of the natural wonder engraved with "Grand Canyon, Colorado" when it had to halt production.

Fortunately, the error was caught before all of several processes involved in producing the self-adhesive backed stamps were finished, Don Smeraldi, spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service, told Reuters.

"In our view it’s not really an error," Smeraldi said. "No customer has received any of these. None were issued." He said the stamps "never left the printer."

Smeraldi said it was unknown just how much of the total order had been under production when the error was found, but he said all of the misprinted stamps would be destroyed and the order reprinted.

Smeraldi said the Postal Service does not know the cost of the error. Neither does the agency know at this time what the reprinting costs will be, he said.

"We’re discussing with the printer just now the cost," he said. "We don’t have any idea at this time. This is a printer we work with all the time so we don’t really know how much it will be."