1976 Illegal Postage, Olympic Protest.

Figure 1. Illegal postage, cut-out image. Protest postcard.

The 1976 Olympics, although a sporting success, suffered from cost overruns, and had its detractors.

The item shown in Figure 1 above is an illustration of the 15c+5c semi-postal, a cut out, used as postage and tied by a roller cancel on an Olympic “special right to buy ticket drawing” lottery card.

The sender entered their name as “Never Mind”, and message as “They’re too expensive. I’ll wait for a cheaper Olympics somewhere in Russia.”

The 1976 Montreal Olympics were scheduled to cost $250 million but ended up costing $1.5 billion. See article here.

The 2014 Russian Olympics cost a reported $55 billion. See article here. So the sender who mailed the card, without paying proper postage, had no idea how expensive Olympics were to become. The comment that they would wait for an Olympics in Russia is quite ironic.

This item is available for $20 on our site here.