Thursday 23 April 2020

60th anniversary of Coronation Street (TV programme) - 18 May 2020

As predicted here (ex The Mirror) over a year ago and because subscribers to Royal Mail's new issue service are now getting their notices telling them how much they will be charged for this issue, it is time to reveal a little more.

Coronation Street wasn't included in the ITV50 issue in 2005

The issue consists of a set of 8 stamps, a miniature sheet, and a retail booklet, which contains the two stamps from the set but self-adhesive.

The face values are 2nd class, 1st class, £1.42 and £1.63 with the miniature sheet containing two each 1st class and £1.42.

Update: As noted in the comments, there is also a Collectors Sheet - no pretence at calling them Smilers or Generic sheets now.  This is like the Dad's Army sheet, 10 x 1st class stamps and labels in a gummed A4 portrait format. The two stamp designs in the sheet, the same as the retail booklet, with 10 labels featuring only the characters on those two stamps.  The labels are slightly larger than the stamps, and have no denomination or head, but the captions on both stamps and labels are similar.

The issue date is 28 May and the PR date - for covers and stamps - is 12 May, so if past experiences is anything to go by we can expect Royal Mail to push the designs out on their website about a week before as the techies otherwise sit twiddling their thumbs, thus taking the focus off the World War II anniversary issue.

Predictably - because there is little else they could do with a television programme, the  stamp 'designs' consist entirely of stills from the programme, starting in black & white days and (presumably) coming reasonably up to date.  Thus some of those depicted will still be alive - but of course the characters are being depicted, not the actors and actresses.

More in due course - I'm sure it will be bought by some of the show's millions of fans.  Equally I'm sure thousands of collectors would avoid it if only they could get over the problem of having a gap in their albums.  [The answer, as I have espoused before, is not to buy pre-printed albums for modern material.]

UPDATE 1 May.
Readers of May's Royal Mail Philatelic Bulletin will read on the back page details of this new issue. For Corrie fans there are 'framed enlarged prints' versions of five of the stamps, so I can tell you that they depict: Ken and Deirdre, Jack and Vera, Hilda and Stan, Ena and Elsie, and Rita and Norris. You can have fun - if you so wish- working out what the other three depict.  The miniature sheet is described as 'The Rovers Return Miniature Sheet', so you might be able to guess what the four stamps included depict.


4 comments:

  1. According to my Order Advice Note there is also a Collectors' Sheet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes indeed, in theory I cannot announce that until somebody else has.... what a stupid position to be in.

      Thanks.

      Delete
  2. Really another miniature first day cover does every commerative set have to accompany with a miniature set first day cover, it's becoming very expensive to keep up we are not half way through the year yet. I'm expecting the Rupert Bear and the Xmas set, Star Trek having miniature first day covers

    ReplyDelete
  3. Miniature sheets used to be reserved for very important issues,but not now.

    ReplyDelete

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