Fight over Philately

DECISIONS Boston Stamp Dealer Henry Harris took one look at the $2 sheet of 50 com memorative Panama Canal Zone stamps and figured that he had made at least a $100,000 find. The Thatcher Ferry Bridge, which was what the commemoration was all about, had somehow failed to show up in the engraving. There were three other misprinted sheets that had not been sold, but embarrassed Zone officials decided to print more, Harris' saturate dreams of the market philatelic and ruin treasure. They were taking their cue from one time Postmaster General J. Edward Day, who had highhandedly ordered a flood of deliberately misprinted Dag HammarskjOeld commemoratives in order to devaluate an accidental misprint (TIME, Nov. 23, 1962).

Harris angrily demurred. He argued that his property was being destroyed without due process. Such a move, he said, went beyond the statutory authority of those ordering the reprints, and the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., agreed. It issued an order forbidding more misprints. And it told Zone officials that they must never distribute the three other misprinted sheets that were still in their possession. Now it was the Zonemen's turn to claim that they were being pushed around. If they could not do what they wanted with their own misprints, they said, they would appeal the decision. Then they offered a compromise: how about letting them destroy one misprinted sheet and present the other two to the Canal Zone museum and the Smithsonian Institution? Harris and the court quickly agreed.

Philatelists threw up their magnifying glasses for joy. At last they had reason to believe that if years of searching for a valuable imperfection should finally pay off, their bonanza would not be wiped out by a U.S. Government printing press.

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