9. CIA Invert
They’re tricky, those CIA agents. Between 1975 and 1981, the Post Office released a series of Americana stamps, four of which depicted light sources. Of these, a $1 stamp—depicting a colonial rush lamp and candle holder—was printed as an invert on a single sheet of 100 stamps. In 1986, nine CIA agents who noticed the error, purchased the sheet with the 95 remaining stamps at the post office in Mclean, Virginia (the post office had unknowingly sold the other five to be used as everyday postage). The agents replaced the rare stamps with regular $1 issues, then sold a sheet with 85 of the inverted rush lamp stamps (plus one damaged stamp) to a collector for $25,000. Each of the agents kept one stamp for themselves. A scandal soon followed, and the agency demanded that the agents return the stamps or face termination (they had been purchased with taxpayer money, after all). Four agents returned their stamps, four quit or were terminated, and one agent claimed they had lost theirs and kept their job.
