“The Kansas Overprint,” sounds like it could be the title of a “a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the world of stamps.” This non-existent book would have been written, of course, by Richard Powers, author of “The Overstory,” which, as Powers website contends, really is a “stunning evocation of-and paean to the world of trees.”

Instead, “The Kansas Overprint,” is the name given to an odd set of stamps (perhaps worthy of a novel) , that were issued in the spring of 1929 and that collectively are today’s #stampoftheday. (The fact that Kansas, which became a state on January 29, 1861, provides the tenuous connection that “allows” me to make these today’s #stampoftheday and in doing so to tell a story that has robbery, forgery, incompetence, and lies.

Here it is

In the late 1920s, robbers apparently often held-up rural post offices and took not only money but also stamps, which they then would sell. Instead of beefing up security at those facilities, the leaders of the Post Office Department tried to reduce the demand for the stolen stamps. They did so by printing the abbreviated names of different states onto existing stamps, literally to “overprint” them.

The overprinted stamps could only be sold at post offices within their respective states, but they were supposed to be valid for postage throughout the United States and wherever U.S regular stamps could be used. This approach, postal officials believed, would reduce the market for stolen stamps because it would make it difficult for robbers to sell stolen overprinted stamps in other states.

Postal officials decided to test the idea in Nebraska and in Kansas. Abbreviations of each state’s names were printed on 11 different stamps, ranging in value from 1 cent to 10 cents (including a 11/2-cent stamp). The Post Office didn’t issue overprinted higher-value stamps because those stamps were printed via a different method that made it hard to overprint them.

On April 15, 1929 the Post Office Department began shipping a year’s supply of stamps to the selected post offices in Kansas and Nebraska. Since security at large city post offices was considered adequate, the stamps were only sent to small post offices.

Despite their high hopes, the initiative was a dismal failure. There were two big problems. First, the overprinted stamps looked a lot like “precancelled” stamps that could only be used locally. (Precancelled stamps, which have been cancelled before being affixed to mail, were used by mass mailers but typically were good only within a small nearby area.)

Second, many postal clerks across the country did not understand the rules about the new stamps and, consequently, often told customers that they had to buy additional postage to replace the entirely valid Kansas and Nebraska stamps. The public complained, and the trial program was stopped about a year later, basically after the post offices had used up the year’s supply of stamps they had received when the program started.

But that wasn’t the end of problems with the overprinted stamp. Because relatively few overprint stamps had been printed, they were appealing to collectors. Consequently, as the headline in a December 1935 New York Times articles noted, “Old Stamps Are Faked; Many of Rarer Issues Are Cleverly Simulated by Counterfeiters.” The article went on to describe “a hazard that to which the unwary or inexperienced collector is frequently subjected.” Fourteen years later, the Times ran another article reporting that a jury took only three minutes to deliver a guilty verdict in a case in which the unnamed “proprietor of a New York stamp firm,” was charged with selling counterfeit stamps. The defendant was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $1,000 by U.S. District Court Judge Simon F. Rifkind. The judge, the Times noted, “was a philatelist in his youth [and had] personally examined many of the stamps introduced as evidence and compared them with the [hundreds of] photographs,” the government introduced as evidence in the trial.

To make the story even stranger, apparently the whole overprint initiative was sold on bogus grounds. According to an article about the stamps posted in May 2006 on the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum website: “Economics rather than theft actually” were the reason that the Post Office went forward with the overprinted stamps. The piece, which is attributed to the Encyclopedia of United States Stamps and Stamp Collecting, goes on to explain: “Kansas and Nebraska postmasters were required to requisition a one-year supply of the overprinted stamps, not the normal quarterly supply requisition,” a shift that saved a fair bit of money. “Had the experiment succeeded,” the article continued, “the Post Office Department planned to extend the scheme to all forty-eight states, hoping to cut fulfillment costs by 75 percent.”

Taken as a whole, this story isn’t quite as dramatic as Power’s magisterial novel. But it does seem to me that “The Kansas Overprint” has it all: robberies, forgeries, confused government clerks, and a disinformation campaign by a major federal agency. I, for one, can’t wait for the movie.

Be safe, stay well, fight for justice, don’t counterfeit stamps, and work for peace.