Upside-Down Seaway

The stamps had an odd look. No matter how she turned the red, white and blue issue commemorating the St. Lawrence Seaway opening,* Mildred Mason, 20, a stenographer for a Winnipeg theater chain, could not get them right side up. She looked closer and realized that the center design and some lettering on 27 newly purchased stamps were upside down.

Stenographer Mason and five others promptly formed a syndicate, notified Winnipeg Stamp Dealer Kasimir Bileski of their find. Astounded at the error, the first to reach the public in Canada's century of stamp printing, Bileski offered the syndicate $1,000 a stamp.

The Winnipeg find--in August--touched off a treasure hunt for the upside-down seaways. Only a few were lucky. The Post Office Department, which guessed that 600 stamps had been reversed between printings, quickly found 300 of them. Possibly 200 more had been located by dealers or collectors; the rest were lost. Last week the Winnipeg syndicate took up Dealer Bileski's offer, sold him 16 of the stamps for $16,000. For alert Mildred Mason, who first noticed the upside-down seaway, the initial reward was a right-side-up $5,500.

* Identical in design, except for national identification, with the 40 U.S. Seaway commemoration stamp.

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