Thursday 30 April 2015

London 2015 - Europhilex - Post and Go stamps

As so often seems to be the case, the authorities have been slow to provide details of what Post and Go stamps will be available at the forthcoming widely-publicised London 2015 exhibition.

We cannot be sure that the information here is accurate and will remain unchanged, based on the situation in previous exhibitions and the Scottish Congress at Perth.

As far as we know machines from Jersey Post, Guernsey Post, Gibraltar PO, will join multiple Royal Mail machines at the Business Design Centre from 13-16 May 2015.



Royal Mail

The new Heraldic Beasts designs will be issued on the opening day, 13 May (click on the link to see the set and special day of issue postmarks).  Royal Mail will have three machines at the show, and the will dispense stamps as follows:

Machine
Reel A
Reel B
Overprint*
A006
Heraldic Beasts
Machin
Machin
A008
Heraldic Beasts
Union Flag
None
A009
Heraldic Beasts
Machin
Machin

* Overprint reads 'Europhilex London / Penny Black 175'

Stamps may also be pre-ordered from the back-office B001 machine - I have no idea whether these will also be available from the Royal Mail stand.  At some Stampex events they have been, at others they have not.  A009 will be alongside the stand with a bar-code scanner, so it may be expected that customers will buy their Post and Go stamps when they buy other packs, cards, albums etc which have bar-codes, via the machine.

B001 will produce Machin stamps with the Europhilex overprint, and Union Flag and Heraldic Beasts stamps without.

The usual exhibition Smilers sheets will also be available in 10s or 20s.



Guernsey Post

... will be selling their Guernsey Flag stamp with a Europhilex overprint from GG01.   I have asked for clarification regarding sale of the Union Flag stamp.  Collectors will recall that we were originally told that the Guernsey machine at Stampex would have a Stampex overprint, but stamps were sold without it from the Machine.  Stamps with the overprint produced from the back-office machine were sold at Guernsey's stand.


Jersey Post

We are awaiting confirmation from Jersey Post regarding their attendance and what they will be selling from JE01.  It is likely to be a Jersey Flag stamp with a Europhilex inscription and the Protected Species stamps which were launched at Spring Stampex.
Update: Jersey post confirmed the Jersey Flag with Europhilex inscription and Union Flag, but have now corrected this to Protected Species.  The Europhilex stamp will apparently NOT be available from their stand, only from the machine. 


Royal Gibraltar Post Office

We understand that Gibraltar will launch it's Post and Go machine at Europhilex with machine GI01 dispensing stamps showing the Gibraltar Flag from reel A, and the Union Flag from reel B.  We have been told that the Gibraltar Flag stamp will have a Europhilex overprint, but this seems unlikely in view of what happened with Guernsey at Spring Stampex.  I'm awaiting confirmation from RGPO.

Whilst we know that UK stamps are sold in the Channel Islands (for SAEs to the UK), I have no knowledge of whether RGPO also sells UK stamps.  The presence of British Forces in the colony would not make this a necessity as there is also a British Forces PO presence.

UPDATE from Gibraltar Philatelic Bureau 7/5/15
Unfortunately we do not have any information on the Post and Go stamps yet.

Hopefully we will have some more info when the machines arrive to Gib hopefully very soon.

Also the Gibraltar Post and Go will be available at Europhilex 2015 so you will be able to purchase them by the machine.
According to the IAR website, GI01 will reside at Gibraltar House in London's Strand between Europhilex and Autumn Stampex.  So there will apparently not be a machine in the colony until later this year or even next.  So they are selling outside the colony a stamp which - presumably - will be valid for postage in the colony, but which is not available there.  
The sad thing is, to mangle a phrase, "You COULD make it up - and you would be right!"

UPDATE:
Thanks to readers who have pointed out additional information buried in the IAR website.  I'll leave the links in the comments, but will only be adding extra information to the blog post when I have it from the postal authorities concerned, given the conflicting information provided in the past.

7 comments:

  1. Some of the wording on the Guernsey labels it seems will be changed. Both Jersey & Guernsey have increased their rate

    http://iarroyalmailpostandgo.com/latestnews/guernsey-post-rate-changes/
    http://iarroyalmailpostandgo.com/latestnews/jersey-post-2015-rate-changes/

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Gibraltar Government office which used to be located opposite Bush House sold Gibraltar stamps & RM stamp books, maybe a machine will be based in their office by Kings College.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. At least we won’t have to go Gibraltar to get their Post & Go’s

      http://iarroyalmailpostandgo.com/latestnews/gibraltar-post/

      Delete
  3. Has Jersey’s situation changed since their 3 tweets on 1st May?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think my update above says the same thing as @Jerseystamps did on twitter.

      "our JE01 kiosk will be at Europhilex 13-16 May vending Jersey flag stamp labels with a special event overprint."

      IAR insist that the other reel will be dispensing Protected Species and "I don’t know why they are giving out this information" (ie that the Union Flag will be on reel B, as I was told by email from Jersey Stamps).

      Delete
    2. So now Postal administrations don’t know what they are selling
      https://twitter.com/jsypost/status/594073533237600257

      Delete
    3. It's an internal communications problem. And I didn't get notification of those twitter replies, so hadn't seen all of them. They've just reconfirmed Protected Species, so I shall edit the blogpost.

      Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Now perhaps you can do some magic on Gibraltar who still haven't responded to an email sent last Thursday!

      Delete

Thank you for reading the blog and commenting: please use an identity (name or pseudonym) rather than being Anonymous; it helps us to know which 'anonymous' comments are from the same person to avoid confusion. Comments are moderated to avoid spam, but will be published as soon as possible.