This year marks the 150th Anniversary of the birth of Sir Edgar Bertram Mackennal, KCVO, the Australian sculptor famous for designing the stamps and coinage bearing the likeness of King George V. A Commemorative Sheet to be issued on 19 September 2013 explores his life and work.
Royal Mail product codes are shown below but these are not yet available to order on Royal Mail's website and probably not by telephone either. I suppose there should be some available at Stampex as that is when they are being issued.
Priced at £14.95 the sheet contains 10 x self-adhesive 1st class 'Royal Mail Seal' stamps and the labels include the ½d and 1d profile stamps, and the 5 shillings Seahorse, as well as some coins or medals.
Royal Mail Philatelic Product Code - AV025
Also on sale (not at most Post Offices) will be a Seahorses Facsimile Pack (at £8.95) and a press sheet of the facsimile sheet at £59.95.
Neither of these products is postally valid.
Front page (click on to see larger) Royal Mail Philatelic Product Code - ZP004
The Seahorses Facsimile Press Sheet consists of 12 blocks of four of the facsimiles with a specially designed border. True to the design and production values of the time, this limited edition product of 150 has also been numbered by hand. (click on to see larger)
Royal Mail Philatelic Product Code - PV001
Enlargement of the Commemorative Sheet (click on to see larger):
Question is, will the £1 seahorse be a facsimile of a stamp that actually existed, or like the Kings Stamps commemorative will it have the design of the re-engraved seahorses?
ReplyDeleteQuestion is why is RM continually moving away from issuing stamps that can be used for normal postage - these are NOT stamps but Cinderella material.
ReplyDeleteSorry? "why is RM continually moving away from issuing stamps"
ReplyDeleteThis year, up to the Butterflies, there will be 62 stamps of 1st or 2nd class, and 10 of higher face values, plus 5 miniature sheets some of which contain only 1st & 2nd class stamps.
By the end of the year that number will rise to 88 and 20 with 7 MS.
This are part of a series of replicas that started in 2010 with the £1 PUC and they make a very good substitute for the real thing. But nobody has your arm up your back while the other hand yanks out your wallet to pay for them!!
True of course - but this still dilutes the purpose and integrity of a Postal Authority.
ReplyDeleteIan, I thought the first in the series of Royal Mail replica stamp packs was the Penny Black block of four issued in May 2000.
ReplyDeleteDo you not count this in the same series?
Paul, you'll be right, although I don't think that is in the series.
ReplyDeleteThe £1 PUC was in 2010, the 1d red pack in 2011, there wasn't one in 2012, and these Seahorses in 2013. I think 2000 is too long ago to be considered part of the current series, and it wasn't a block of 4 as the recent ones have been. See http://s1233.photobucket.com/user/civron/media/GB2011/1d_red_facsimile004.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
OK, but there was also an Olympic Games replica pack of the 1948 stamps issued in 2012.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's the 2012 pack: because it was photogravure and not engraved I had forgotten it!
DeleteThis pack has the RM product code ZP004 indicating that it is the 4th.
DeleteSince you put the codes for the Facsimile pack and sheet I have tried to put an order in for these items but Royal Mail keeps telling me to ring back in August. I would imagine by then the Sheets will already be allocated to some lucky few. Why when you can place standing orders for most of it's products won't it take advance orders for these items, I realize they can't send them until they are released but not to take orders once the codes are out there seems pointless and just alienates it's already frustrated customer base.
ReplyDeleteRe availability, I did suggest that that might be the case - red paragraph at the top.
DeleteI don't think the Press sheet (the only one in short supply) is being sent to people with Press Sheet standing orders as this are not postally valid stamps.
I have a copy of the mackennal seahorses press sheet no. 88 of 150, what is it worth?
ReplyDeleteI know of no market for press sheets. I know of some people who have bought them, but most people have decided that storage and preservation is a problem that they don't want, and have shunned them.
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