COLOMBIA

COLOMBIA.

Platinum production. Map of Chocó department.
Eleventh stamp in a set of 22, issued on 05.03.1956.
Face value: 20 cent of Colombian peso.
Printing: Recess.
Printed by Thomas de la Rue & Co., Ltd, London.
Print: 2,000,000 copies.
Size: 30 x 35 mm.

Catalogues
- Michel No. 778.
- Scott No. 654.
- StampWorld No. 760.
- Stanley Gibbons No. 883.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 519.

The department of Chocó is located in the northwest of Colombia, on the border with Panama, and has coasts on the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Its territory was explored for the first time in 1501 by Rodrigo de Bastidas, and in 1510 Vasco Núñez de Balboa founded there Santa María la Antigua del Darién, the first European city on America. The Spanish traders introduced African slaves, some of whom rebelled in 1728 and proclaimed their leader king. The clashes with the Spanish troops concluded with the proclamation of independence of Chocó on February 2, 1813. The municipality of Condoto became the world capital of platinum due to the extraction, legal and illegal, of that metal and also of gold.