Museums Post and Go News - the floodgates open

With military and other museums now reopening after the pandemic lockdown Royal Mail have decided to allow some special inscriptions to be added to the stamps sold from their Post and Go machines.  Updates below in red are 14 October.

The Postal Museum

As already announced, the Virtual Stampex 2020 inscription will be added to stamps from 1 October.  Information from Royal Mail says that this will be until 12 October and be on the PO London Railway stamps, rather than the Machin head that he Museum shows.  Clarification has been sought!

UPDATE 6 October: Royal Mail have confirmed that the Machin head was available not the Railway, but continue to insist that it is available until 12 October.  Given that the Museum is closed (reopening on 29th) the point is moot.  You can't get them in person and when the Museum choose to print them, take orders, and send them out would seem to be irrelevant.

Although closure meant that they missed the actual anniversary, the Museum is planning an exhibition on the 150th Anniversary of the introduction of the Postcard.  The inscription Postcards 150 will be on the Mail Coach stamps from 29 October 2020 to 30 September 2021, subject to confirmation of the exhibition dates.  (This will be in addition to the regular The Postal Museum inscription.)

For Christmas, the Museum will use the Winter Greenery stamps with the regular The Postal Museum inscription from 3 November 2020 to 1 January 2021.

Fleet Air Arm Museum, RNAS Yeovilton

The Museum reopened on 14 August, opening Wednesday to Sunday only.  This year 11 November falls on a Wednesday and from then until 30 November their machine will have the Taranto 80 inscription on the Union Flag stamp and Taranto 80 + logo on the Machin head stamp.

Note as with most museums, entry is by advance booking only so anybody planning to attend to get these should contact the museum to find out what arrangements have been made.

Stuart Leigh provided these images of the FAAM Union Flag, which is a new printing with year code MA19 (not RO19YAL) and is digital - believed to be for the first time.

Fleet Air Arm Museum October 2020 Post & Go digitally printed Union Flag stamp with MA19 year code.

Steam GWR Swindon

This museum is open 7 days a week, but as usual it is timed entry and advance booking only.  I can't see anything on their website which mentions it's the 20th anniversary of their opening but that's what the Post and Go machine is telling us!

The additional inscription Celebrates 20 Years will be applied to the Locomotive and Machin head stamps from 12 October to 31 December 2020.

Thanks to Mike C who made the trip to Swindon for the Steam GWR restart.  "I phoned the Museum before setting off given the travel distance and they said they had been very busy first thing and had already had to restock the kiosk."

The Machin is MA13 and the Locomotive is MA16. Note that they only exist with the Zone 1&3 indicator.

Correction:  KH reports "
I have a receipt from the Museum dated 17/9 /20 with both strips having Zone 1-3".

Incidentally none of these apart from the Postal Museum Stampex overprint is mentioned on the IAR website, which is quite out of date in many respects, showing how hard it is to keep a website updated even if you are at the heart of things!

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