Barcoded Country Definitives - why? Who will be able to buy them?

Royal Mail have made it known that the Country Definitives will be invalidated along with the Machins and others, withdrawn, and replaced by new stamps with a datamatrix code.  These are to be issued (according to an earlier blog comment) on 11th August. 

UPDATE AT FOOT OF BLOG.

Given the invalidation announcement, this comes as no surprise.  But who actually uses them, and where are they actually available to buy?

Many people have asked, but this is prompted by the latest in a series of emails from one of our readers.  In the latest he writes:

On the Antrim coast, I have tried three post offices today, and not a single regional was to be had. To be fair, they all knew what I was talking about, but had not had them in stock for some time.

Six months ago, he reported from Scotland:

At Aberfeldy post office I was flabbergasted to discover that they had NO regionals in their counter books.

I was told that not only do they not get any, but if they try to order them, they get sent Machins instead. “You’ll have to go to Pitlochry” I was told. So, next time at the shops in Pitlochry I took myself off to the “main” post office (still just a counter in a mini market as far as I’m concerned). There he was able to show me lions and saltires but definitely no tartans or thistles. And this is no accident. The same was true later at Banchory.

He and others have reported similarly in the past and I have had similar experience.

Mock-up of Scotland
1st class stamp
with German-size
datamatrix code.

So I asked the Post Office social media team about availability, and received this reply:

The country definitives are available to all branches in the representative areas to order in.  The issue most of the time with this scenario is that branches stop ordering these stamps regularly, as there is little to no demand for them, and branches can go months, even years, without being asked for them so stop replenishing stock. 

It is, however, easy enough for the branch to order some in if a customer wants them and they don't have any in their stock.

To which I replied:

So basically it is a catch-22 situation. 

If the stamps are out of stock they can't be offered, and so customers don't know about them. They don't know so they don't ask, so there is no demand, so branches don't re-order. So they can't be offered. 

Couple this with the fact that they are gummed rather than self-adhesive (which users prefer, we're told - largely because they buy deifnitives most, and few special stamps either, then there won't be much demand. Despite this they are being replaced with equivalent stamps with datamatrix codes, still on ordinary gum because it's cheaper. 

So my correspondent who says that they are only issued for collectors is correct!

According to my contact within Royal Mail the same process of consultation between the two companies which led to the abolition of the Special Delivery and Signed For stamps last autumn has led to the continuation of country definitives.  

That is to say, Post Office Ltd and/or the branches said that they did not want the premium services stamps (which so many users have said were useful to them) but they do have demand for the Country Definitives. 

We accept that, in any organisation, what users and customers want may not be convenient or economical to any organisation (which is why products disappear from supermarket shelves), but the implication of this is really surprising.

It suggests that somewhere in each (or at least a majority) of the countries there is sufficient demand from social and business users to warrant the product of 12 totally new stamps in (I presume) a new larger size for these users to apply to their mail instead of the ordinary definitive or any other gummed stamp.  I accept that there are probably some patriotic and nationalistic people who want to use traditional symbols for the country (or in Northern Ireland fields rocks and some linen), but I'd like to see some evidence.

If anybody has time and expertise in putting forward a Freedom of Information Act enquiry on where these stamps are sold, I'd be pleased to publish the results.  There's no need to survey the offices - just where the central distribution point sends them.

UPDATE 14 July.  This morning several readers mentioned that the new stamps were available to pre-order on the Royal Mail website.  Indeed I took a screenshot to show here.    Because I had pointed out earlier that the mock-up picture of the presentation pack appeared to show U-shaped slits on what were said to be gummed stamps (although we were told yesterday that they are self-adhesive) a revised picture of the pack was sent out at 9am - along with a reminder that the embargo date for stamps already available to pre-order was (still) the issue date of 11 August.  It took four hours for a further email to be sent with the 'news' that the embargo was lifted. 

So here is the mock-up image we were sent a while back. 

Barcoded country definitive 2nd class, 1st class and £1.85 stamps for Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England, issued 11 August 2022

As you can see the datamatrix codes have been printed in similar colours to some of the stamps, which all seems a bit of a waste of time and effort.  Whilst black would probably not have worked, some of these are so close to black to be almost indistinguishable at a distance (and at speed).  It remains to be seen what they look like in practice and I shall provide some images in due course.

The sheet layout is the same as the valued Machin stamps, that is sheets of 25, with each stamp 39 x 30 mm.   As you will see from the sheet, the plate/cylinder numbers are 'C' indicating Cartor although the designation we have is the old generic one of ISP. 

Mocked-up sheet of 25 1st class Scotland stamps with datamatrix code.

A single presentation pack with overlapping stamps because they are too big, and four first day covers will also be available.  The latter are illustrated with new photos, representing the first change since country definitive FDCs were introduced*.  (They can be seen on the Commonwealth Stamps Opinion blog.)  *My thanks to Robert who points out that these are not new; looking back I find that the new designs were introduced in 2017.

Akcnowledgments: the designs are the same so you can read the designer details in a cataogue or in older Philatelic Bulletins.   There is no change to any of the first day postmarks which remain as they have been since 1999/2001.

From the changes we have been sent it would seem that there are no U-shaped security die-cuts in these stamps, and it seems likely that there will be no iridescent printing to indicate the year of printing. We haven't seen them yet.

UPDATE 17 August: Answering my own question - who will be able to buy them? - I have been in Wales.  The post office at Church Stoke (just across the Shropshire border) where I posted some of the new Wales stamps, hadn't seen them and didn't know of them.

At Montgomery the post office was closed due to a Covid outbreak, so no luck there.

At Much Wenlock in Shropshire, where the post office is in the Spar mini-market and which is identified as a 'Local', I was told that they did not expect to be getting any England stamps because they didn't get any special stamps.  I protested that they were not 'special' just alternative!  I was told that they were at nearby Broseley.  

The biggest surprise (in the comments below) is that at the 'Philatelic' office in Cambridge city centre, the manager professed not to know of the existence of any of the new country definitives.

Thank you for sharing your stories about availability (or otherwise) of country definitives. Do let us know your experience with the new ones which should, in theory, be available from all post offices in the respective countries.

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