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World Cup Winners Create Joint Issue

In anticipation of the upcoming World Cup soccer championships — scheduled for May 31-June 30 in Seoul, Korea, and Yokohama, Japan — six different nations have jumped on the joint issue bandwagon with a pair of se-tenant “Soccer World Champions of the Twentieth Century” stamps packed with interesting and possibly unique features.

Pictured above is a set of two 75-centavo stamps from Argentina, which were issued on April 27. The square of paper at left, although perforated in a similar fashion to its partner, actually contains a circular stamp at center that is perfed separately and can be removed from its surrounding borders.

This round stamp incorporates seven different flags into its design, representing the seven nations that have won the World Cup since its inception in 1930: Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy and Uruguay (not the order in which they appear on the stamp).

Below are two 56-euro cent German versions, which were released on May 2 by Deutsche Post. Although they use the same design, the perfs appear much larger than those of its Argentine cousin. Since the German image above shows an actual stamp, while the Argentine version was taken from a publicity brochure, it is difficult to say if there truly is such a large difference in perf gauge.

Another obvious difference between the two pairs of stamps is the order in which the flags appear on the circular denomination, as well as the appearance of the German flag on the square stamp and the image of a German player in uniform.

According to details from both Correo Argentino and Deutsche Post, four of the remaining five 20th century World Cup champions will also release stamps with this design: Brazil, France, Italy and Uruguay. Only England will not participate.