FREE: W@W L@@K!!!Legends of the West Collectors Stamps!!!

The listing, W@W L@@K!!!Legends of the West Collectors Stamps!!! has ended.

This legendary stamp collection also has brief bios on the back for all the legends of the west.

Original paintings by ©Mark Hess for the US Postal Service.
This project was a great pleasure, yet not without it's trouble. Almost two years in the making, the 'Legends' series was the first in a new format the Postal Service wanted to create entitled 'Classic Collections'. Issued twice a year, the series was to consist of multiple stamps with a different related subject matter and a header. To further the educational value of the series, each stamp would also be printed on the obverse with a concise history of the subject. We started with eight stamps, then sixteen, and finally settled on twenty to give ourselves enough space to tell a more complete story (actually 24 paintings were made, but four were edited out).

THE CONTROVERSY part 1-Bill or Ben?
Finally the paintings were complete, millions of the stamps were printed and a release date was set. Anticipation and media hype was high when the unthinkable happened. Just weeks before release a distant relative of Bill Pickett, one of the stamp subjects, came forward with a claim that the image used for the painting was not Bill at all, but his brother Ben! After much effort to verify the truth (which to my knowledge was never absolutely confirmed) the Postal Service made the unprecedented decision to recall the whole series, which by now had been shipped to post offices all across the country. They did not want there to be any doubt about the identity of anyone honored on a US postage stamp, and preferred to err on the side of historical accuracy by having a new portrait painted with an uncontested photo of Bill and reissuing the whole series.

In the end the stamps were a huge success and the Postal Service had the next Classic Collection (the Civil War) painted by Mark Hess.