We made our own enquiries and can show another example used on a newspaper competition entry - again the date is not clear but ours seems to be 27 February, and the location 'Home Counties North'.
This is quite remarkable. Either the Post Office branch had no other 1st class stamps to sell (which is unlikely) or they misunderstood the release date.
The story was picked up by a German Philatelic magazine. And they've acknowledged the source.
So does this invalidate all the 'first day' covers to come. Like the Queens birthday, in future we'll have to have an official first day which may be proceeded by many unofficial first days.
ReplyDeleteNo, FDCs will still mark the official first day of issue.
DeleteThis isn't uncommon: most new stamps are used early somewhere - see http://blog.norphil.co.uk/2012/01/shortage-of-stamps-at-pos-reported.html for 10 January 2012 Roald Dahl used on 4 January due to shortage of 68p stamps.
What a crying shame it wasn't postmarked Eccleston.
ReplyDelete