UEFA Europass 2008 Postage Stamp

Football is one of the most popular sports in many countries around the world. We American’s refer to it as soccer though.

In 2008, the Austrian Post Office issued an amazing stamp to promote the UEFA EURO 2008 soccer tournament. UEFA EURO 2008 was held in June of 2008 and was the largest sporting event ever held in Austria. There was quite a bit of hype about this particular stamp as it was seemingly a one-of-a-kind concept.

At the time, experts in the philatelic world considered the stamp to be a fantastic creation. The stamp featured the normally 69 cm ball shrunk down to a mere 36 mm. The amazing thing about the stamp was that it was created by using the original material as the UEFA European Championship soccer ball. The synthetic mix with polyurethane was interesting to say the least. The stamp promoted Adidas as well.

Collectors and previous non-collectors clamored to pick up one of the 490,000 stamps that were released. At the time, the head of philately at the Austrian Post Office said “Altogether, the Europass stamp is our most sophisticated stamp in terms of typography and fabric.”

There were many attempts to perfect the stamp prior to releasing it to the public. The stamps had to endure special printing methods because it was made of plastic and not paper. The stamp production cost almost 20 times the price of normal postage stamps.

Sadly, there was one major problem that arose with these postage stamps…they would not stick to envelopes! As a result, large numbers of the stamps had to be withdrawn and replaced.