"Scotland Winners" and other Royal Mail stamps that we never saw

As you will know, I love stamps. I know that sounds a bit unusual for someone my age, but I have said many times that I think stamps are tiny pieces of history you can hold in your hand. Some stamps celebrate big national events or important people. But I have recently discovered stamps that were designed and approved but then never issued at all. Why not? Well, because the events they were supposed to be celebrating never happened!

This year is a World Cup year and it feels extra exciting because, for the first time since 1998, Scotland will actually be there. For Scotland supporters, like my dad, just qualifying is a huge thing. Scotland have never made it past the group stage before, but maybe this could finally be the year? It won’t be easy, because the group has Haiti, Morocco and Brazil, and the last two are pretty good. But… not impossible.

Most stamp collectors know about the famous England Winners 1966 stamp (left). It’s one of the most well-known British football stamps ever, showing England’s World Cup victory. But what lots of people don’t know is that Royal Mail once designed a “Scotland Winners” stamp too. Yes, really! It was created before the 1978 World Cup, because someone at Royal Mail thought Scotland might actually win the whole thing.

That seems really strange now. If you know anything about the 1978 World Cup, you’ll know that Scotland’s campaign was… not great. It was a disaster. They didn’t even get out of the group. They lost 3-1 to Peru, then drew 1-1 with Iran before beating the Netherlands 3-2. In the last game Scotland showed how good they were, winning against the eventual finalists. If only they'd played so well in the first two games. Many people say that was probably the strongest Scotland team ever, so having so much confidence made sense. Still, imagine being so sure you’re going to win the World Cup that the stamps are already designed! Those stamps were never issued but the designs are now in the Postal Museum. Like the 1966 stamp, they use generic pictures of footballers as, at the time, no living person was allowed to be shown on a stamp apart from Royals. They're quite good, although I'm not sure why all the players have the same hair.

It also makes me wonder what would happen this year if Scotland or England won. Or possibly even Northern Ireland or Wales, as they could still qualify in the play-offs. Would Royal Mail make special stamps? I don't know, but not in the same way as 1978. These days, they could use photographs instead of drawings, which would be much faster to design and approve. We saw something like that in 2012, when stamps were quickly made for Olympic gold medal winners. So maybe Royal Mail would already have a plan ready… just in case. It’s actually not unusual for draft stamp designs to never be used. Designers come up with lots of ideas, sketches, and early versions that don’t make it past the planning stage. That’s normal. What’s really unusual about the Scotland Winners stamp is that they weren’t just rough ideas. They were fully designed, properly approved and ready to go.

Another set of “almost” stamps I find fascinating are the Scottish Assembly stamps. They were designed when it looked like Scotland might get its own assembly in 1979. But the referendum didn't provide the expected result, so the stamps were never released. Again, they show how stamps are about so much more than posting letters — they’re about hopes, expectations, and even politics.

Here are the designs for the proposed Scottish Assembly stamps of 1979:

The Thistle stamp is very classy. The other stamp, showing the old Royal High School, is not quite so impressive, but this is the building that would have been used for the Assembly. Sadly, the old school has been sitting empty ever since and, when Scotland finally got its own parliament in 1999, it was decided not to use this building after all. A new parliament building was built instead. There is a mistake on this stamp though! My dad is a Gaelic speaker and he has pointed out that "Comhdhail na Alba" is incorrect. It should be "Comhdhail na h-Alba"*. So perhaps it was just as well that it was not issued! I haven't been able to find any other Royal Mail stamps with Gaelic text, so this would have been a first. I think these stamps are very interesting, even though they were never printed. They tell stories of what people thought would happen, not just what actually did. And who knows? Maybe this year Royal Mail will need to rush out a brand-new Scotland Winners stamp after all. I’d definitely buy one (or an England one!) There are a few other "stamps that never were" listed by the Postal Museum. The first is the King Edward VII 2d Tyrian Plum of 1910, which was printed but never released as the king died. The others relate to designs that were later abandoned or changed slightly and (in the case of the 1990 Thomas Hardy stamps) completely redesigned as the Queen didn't like them. But I can't find any other examples of stamps being all ready to go and then being cancelled because the planned events hadn't happened. The fact that there were two in the space of a year and both of them were about Scotland is quite remarkable! * Editor's note: For those interested, h-prefixation occurs in Gaelic when the definite article (na) precedes a feminine noun that begins with a vowel (even a proper noun such as Alba). An h- is inserted between the article and the noun to avoid a glottal stop and to make the phrase easier to pronounce. This is similar to other languages, such as French when the elision is used (e.g. "La amie" would become "L'amie").