One Post Office branch obviously doesn't want to keep special stamps cluttering up the safe for too long so they placed the David Bowie stamps on sale last week, possibly at the same time as the Windsor Castle stamps (or instead of?).
A correspondent has sent this picture of the Hunky Dory stamp with a Jubilee Mail Centre postmark of 17 February, although in this picture it looks a bit like 17-03-2017. The letter was sent from Sunbury-on-Thames (which doesn't necessarily indicate where the stamp was bought).
At the time of writing this is the Earliest Known Use of a 2017 Bowie stamp.
Bristol Returned Letter Branch
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Bristol Returned Letter Branch handled letters that need returning to the
sender in the south-west. The covers below are from 1887 and 1901, with
"R.L.B...
Slightly pedantic, but Jubilee handles mail from KT (Kingston) and TW (Twickenham) postcode areas, so more SW than NW London really.
ReplyDeleteBob you are absolutely right, thank you. I intended SW but somehow changed it to NW when checking where it was actually located. Doesn't it also handle GU (Guildford)?
DeleteSeems it could have been bought anywhere from London to the south coast!
It does - I should have known that. In the last ten minutes I have had a letter from my mother who has a GU postcode and it is duly postmarked at Jubilee!
DeleteIt appears someone is already holding these in-hand, but won't deliver until the release date:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ebay.com/sch/m.html?_odkw=&_ssn=12pea&nma=true&hash=item2efdebed9e%3Ag%3AWKMAAOSwr%7ElYrTpV&item=201828593054&orig_cvip=true&_osacat=0&si=xNSz%252BxrUec%252F4VTH5nhFPGoLrcR0%253D&_from=R40&_trksid=p2046732.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xdavid+bowie.TRS0&_nkw=david+bowie&_sacat=0
In case above link does not work, it's eBay seller "12pea" who clearly has these already.
I have them too. As with the Windsor Castle Machins I could put them on our webshop a couple of weeks early so that people could order them along with other new stamps. I still didn't send them out until the day of issue which is what Jonathan Gilbert, the eBay seller, is doing.
DeleteNothing wrong with that at all.