I knew we were getting close but I didn't expect this overnight.
Our sincere thanks to all contributors who have made this blog the success it is. Whilst others are built on researching past and future stamp issues, ours relies heavily on news and only a small part of that is news that we discover.
Without our contributors providing information, pictures, comments - and especially corrections - we wouldn't have reached this landmark.
It must have been a day to stay in yesterday as we had over 11,000 visitors!
Our Modern Great Britain Postal History blog is only on 64,000 views, but now that the emphasis is off Machin variants (and hoping that there are not too many Carolean variants to report) I hope to provide more information for discussion over there.
Once again - THANK YOU!
I would like to thank you for the incredible work you do with this so important blog. The range of news you pass on with meticulous detail, all lavishly illustrated, is remarkable including as it does new issues, older discoveries, modern postal history and the Great Scandal. No wonder the Philatelic Bulletin was consigned to history!
ReplyDeleteI thought that I would have a trawl for other milestones. In July 2012 you had reached 400,000 hits and were looking forward to 500,000. Such modesty! In January 2019 you reached 3,333,333 hits and only in November 2022 you were at 5,555,555. This latter means that it took only nine months to pass 6,000,000 – a rate of approximately 50,000 hits per month!
Congratulations once again – it really is so important what you are doing for us all.
Thank you for your very kind words and look back at the past.
DeleteIn July 2012 I didn't realise how the Gold Medal issues would affect us. Royal Mail at the time promised to let dealers have images within, I think, an hour of the result, and so sometimes I was posting images just past midnight having prepared the page based on my own following of the games. I don't think anybody else was reporting these, save for Royal Mail on their social media pages, so collectors worldwide tuned in to my 'broadcast'. It was a fun time but I wouldn't want to be doing it 10 years later and older!
I'd also like to thank you for the blog and for answering my questions by e-mail.
ReplyDeleteI'm a returner to collecting and, at the beginning, it was a shock to see how much had changed in 35 years. My first job as a teenager was to work for Georges Korel in his stamp shop at 77 Victoria Street. That period, the 1960s-1970s was in hindsight the golden period of stamp collecting. I remember the queue of people waiting each week for the delivery of Stamp Collectingl and the stamp exhibitions, which you had to pay to get into and had queues round the block.
I collect GB QE II and go to the major auctions, where it is depressing to see the property of deceased collectors dumped into archive boxes and selling for a fraction of face value.
When, eventually, the Post Office ends the swap out scheme, I expect the prices for GB QE II lots to crash.
I think Swap Out has been an own goal for the Post Office. I wouldn't have bothered to look at what I had in the way of Machins - I'm one of those collectors who concentrate more on buying than doing anything with what I have: wrong I know. So far, I've sent in 27 lots amounting to around £50,000 value. Most of these lots have been 1st and 2nd NVI, bought over the years at much lower prices.
I've had no difficulty selling the returned stamps at around 60%-65% to a stamp dealer, one of the few people still in business that I can remember from my stamp shop days, and the largest discount postage seller.
Again, thanks for your blog - I check it every day and it always has something of interest. Your recent announcement about the price rises in October has made me some money - I was just about to sell two large lots of stamps but, by selling after 2 October, I'll get around £3,000 more.
Thank you!