Germany's World Cup Stamp Printed Before Match Was Played

An interesting read -- although not surprising that they would have to do it this way:

http://sports.ndtv.com/fifa-world-c...VSports.com)

Not to pick on the poor Germans, but:

In her justifiably famous 'Guns Of August', Barbara Tuchman reports that the Germans entered Belgium with pre-printed posters announcing the number of civilian hostages to be surrendered by each town, and the number that would be shot in retaliation for any resistance to the invading army.

This preparedness thing is in their blood. If you're buying, say, CNC machines, you can do worse than pay the German price (as opposed to, say, the Taiwanese price) and see it work right out of the box (okay, right out of the shipping crate).

The real question is whether/not they also pre-printed some sort of congratulatory souvenir sheet for the other guys, kinda like those two piles of newspapers at the end of that movie whose name I never remember.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

News papers do it too- preprint lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_...truman12.jpg

It happens in professional sport in The US and Canada...t-shirts, caps etc are prepared ahead of the final championship game for both teams involved. The winning team usually is seen wearing the shirts and caps imprinted with their logo minutes after the end of the game.

The garb with the losers logo printed is immediately destroyed to prevent unique collectors items.

It's certainly happened before in World Cup tournaments. Hungary had to junk a Winners issue in 1954, when it lost to West Germany in the final, as did Netherlands, when it lost to West Germany in the 1974 final. The Netherlands also had a Winners set ready for the 2014 tournament, which will also be destroyed.
In 1978 when Scotland made it into the tournament final series, the Royal Mail had a design prepared if Scotland actually won the World Cup:

http://www.footballphilately.com/20...rs-1978.html