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Explained Day, now known in stamp collecting circles as the meanest man in the U.S.: "The Post Office Department isn't running a jackpot operation. We are interested in helping the collector of normal stamps and keeping the rank and file—the millions of collectors who are collecting normal stamps—from feeling that somebody has gotten a special advantage over them."
More probably, Day was remembering the scandal stirred up by Postmaster General James A. Farley during the Administration of that Great Big Stamp Collector, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With an eye to pleasing the boss, Farley had six sheets each of several new issues pulled before they were run through the perforating machines, and presented them to F.D.R. and a few stamp-collecting Farley friends. When one of the recipients tried to sell these souvenirs, U.S. collectors screamed "foul," Farley was threatened with impeachment, and hastily recouped by ordering the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to grind out bundles of identical favor sheets.
Issues, Errors. The Kennedy-Day Administration obviously wanted to invite no such attack. But the stamp world was not appeased. Wrote one reader to the New York Herald Tribune: "Why not take every rare American stamp, reissue and recirculate accordingly? This most certainly would ensure against any 'inflated value' of historically rare issues."
More realistic advice came from Lawrence W. Moltz, a Baltimore stamp dealer, who observed that if the bonanza finders had kept their mouths shut and put their prizes in a safe-deposit box for a few years, "they would have made their fortunes." And CBS Commentator Jack Sterling, noting ironically that last week was officially National Stamp Collecting Week, declared it "a holiday devoted to a great hobby that every stamp enthusiast is promoting this year—collecting canceled postmaster generals."