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Denmark 1963: The stamp "State of Emergency"

In 1991, when still swing my passion for stamps (and especially when I was still a lot of free time and very few thoughts ... sigh) bought for about 60,000 lire (figure at that time quite demanding for the pockets of a twelve-year-old) the stamp most "precious" and my original collection, called by Bollaffi as the "Stamp state of emergency." The thing that struck me immediately and that the time was incredibly intriguing was certainly not the aesthetics (as you can see in the image, you can not just define "good"), but the story behind it concealed.

In the early'60s, when the Cold War was at its peak in the plans of 'Operation Stay Behind "designed by the CIA and coordinated with the Secret Services of Western Europe to confront any military occupation came from Eastern, were designed stamps of "special". In 1963 the Director General of Posts Danes did print the utmost secrecy of the stamps of "emergency" because, in moments of crisis, would have been necessary and essential to keep in full several institutions and national symbols are possible: the declared value was neutral and bore the stamp the word "valid postage for a letter."

These stamps were kept hidden in several secret places of the country well for 30 years, until 1991 the year when it was decided to collect them and destroy them all, they now finally ended the Cold War, only a small print run was saved and offered to the Museum of Posts and the Danish Federation of stamps, all samples remained unsold by 31 December 1991 were destroyed.

To date went pretty 15 years and the thing that ramar me most is that I've never been able to find more information on that stamp or even to discover what may be its current value.

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