New Postage Rate stamps 20 March 2018.

The first stocks of these are now starting to arrive after Royal Mail's snow-enforced shut-down last week.   

The Machin pictures below are from the FDC, except for the £2.25.  This may mean, for people who worry about such things, that the direction of print is different on the £2.25.  All these are all actual stamps so you can see that the year code is M18L as expected.  

£1.25 - holly green, same colour as 81p of 2014
£1.45 - dove grey, same colour as £1.47 of 2014
£1.55 - marine turquoise, same colour as £2.15 of 2014
£2.65 - purple heather, same colour as 97p of 2014
£2.25 - plum purple, unchanged

As you can see from the sheet, the £2.25 at least is printed in 8 positions on the cylinder.  I suspect that the others will be the same.  The sheets are of 25 stamps, not 50 as suggested by Royal Mail's trade information channel.  The full range of stamps will be in our shop to order before the issue date.

Machin Printing Dates known so far: those in red are ones that we have, others have been reported from POs.

£1.25    10/01/18
£1.45    10/01/18
£1.55    15/01/18
£2.25    15/01/18
£2.65    15/01/18


Of the country stamps....
Shown for comparison are earlier examples of the Northern Ireland 1st & 2nd values.  As expected the stamps are gummed, not self-adhesive.  1st & 2nd values for all countries are in sheets of 50, airmail values are in sheets of 25.

England

Country stamp printing dates  .
England and Wales 1st and 2nd class - 26/12/17 (well, that's what it says on the sheets!)
All other values - 27/12/17

   

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