Waste of the Day: Burning “Simpsons” Stamps
Topline: Individual commemorative postage stamps have never sold more than 517 million copies each. But in 2009, using arithmetic befitting Ralph Wiggum, the U.S. Postal Service decided to print 1 billion stamps featuring characters from “The Simpsons.”
The majority went unsold and were destroyed in 2012 once they became obsolete, wasting $1.2 million worth of printing expenses. The money would be worth $1.9 million today.
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname "Dr. No" by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn't stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn's Wastebook 2012 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $18 billion, including the scrapped stamps.
Key facts: The Post Office’s inspector general reported that only 318 million Simpsons stamps were sold, leaving 682 million to be destroyed.
Each stamp was printed with the number 44 in the corner to show its cost. Once the price of a stamp increased to 46 cents in January 2012, the Simpsons stamps became unusable.
The inspector general found that in total, $4 million was spent printing 2 billion commemorative and special issue stamps in 2009 and 2010 that were later destroyed. The stock included 20 million Bob Hope stamps, 5 million stamps featuring Supreme Court justices, and 10 million featuring Katherine Hepburn.
There does not appear to be a more recent audit showing how much money is wasted by poor stamp sales. Commemorative stamps are now issued as “forever stamps” that can be used even if the price of postage later increases, allowing the Post Office to keep them on sale for longer. Still, that does not mean all of them get sold.
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Summary: Running the entire country’s postal service is tricky business, but realizing that a stamp is unlikely to sell 1 billion copies is just common sense.
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