It’s that time of the year when many Americans and Canadians start booking their annual Las Vegas trips for some Sin City style drinking, gambling and carrying on. This year, it appears that the US Postal Service may have inadvertently helped plant the Las Vegas seed in the minds of millions of Americans through postage stamps.
The United States Postal Service printed 3 billion copies of a new postage stamp with the image of the Statue of Liberty, there was only one glaring problem, it wasn’t the image of the actual Statue of Liberty. Instead of posting the image of the Statue of Liberty found in New York Harbour, the US Postal Service inexplicably printed the image of the fibreglass and styrofoam replica of the monument located outside the New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
The funny thing about it is that they didn’t even know they had made the mistake until a stamp collector brought it to their attention.
Obviously it was an embarrassing error, but MGM Resorts International, which owns the New York-New York Hotel and Casino was naturally pleased with the mistake. As quoted in a Reuters article, Yvette Monet, a spokeswoman for the company said, “We all thought that the Post Office was honouring just one great American institution, but in reality it was honouring two — The Statue of Liberty and Las Vegas — with just one stamp…Regardless of how it came about, New York-New York is honoured to be the first Las Vegas casino resort to be on a U.S. stamp.”
Maybe it was a Freudian slip. Or maybe it was an attempt to send subliminal messages to US residents that it’s about time to head to Las Vegas. Either way, the irony of a symbol synonymous with gambling being posted on a US postage stamp in the wake of Black Friday is priceless.
