Anonymous absentee ballot mailed with $3M stamp

[Rach3]

At the risk of perpetuating the "Florida voters are idiots" stereotype from the '00 ballot crisis - well, here you go:

MIAMI (Reuters) - 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 election, a government official said on Friday.

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, Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom told Reuters.
...
A block of four of the stamps sold for almost $3 million last year, however, and Rodstrom said the one that turned up Tuesday night could fetch about $500,000 for Broward County at auction.

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

And who mailed this ballot? Well, no one knows:

Rodstrom said he did not examine the envelope's postmark, but it had no return address and the ballot was disqualified because it gave no clue as to the identity of the voter.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061110/us_nm/life_stamp_dc

 

[chroot]

My money says it's hoax. After the recent scandal in which ballots required two first-class stamps -- while many voters mailed them with only one -- I suspect this is just a joke. Assuredly, $500,000 postage should be adequate.. My money says it's a fake stamp.

- Warren

 

[twisting_edge]

I agree it is probably a hoax. The inverted Jenny is world famous. Even I know of it, and I've never had any interest in stamps at all.

 

[Danger]

Echo The Edge.
This does not, however, negate the fact that Florida voters are idiots.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Yup, the odds are enormous the stamp is a forgery, or maybe just an innocent piece of decoration. Doesn't have to be a deliberate hoax, nobody's seen the thing but some VERY amateur stamp collectors.

 

[Moonbear]

Anyone who had such a stamp in their possession would have it because they knew its worth, and would have never used it mistakenly to mail something, unless it was a kid who didn't know they were part of a stamp collection and just grabbed the first stamps s/he found in a desk (sort of like when my aunt used part of my mom's coin collection to buy bubble gum as a kid...I'm surprised my aunt survived her childhood between that and the other stories I've heard of the two of them).