Regular readers will remember that when the Datamatrix-added stamps were trialled,
"Nick Landon, Chief Commercial Officer at Royal Mail, said: 'This initiative will see Royal Mail become one of the first postal authorities in the world to add unique barcodes to stamps. By doing this, we are looking to transform the humble stamp so that we can offer our customers even more convenient, new services in the future."
(See 2nd class Machin with datamatrix added)
Then...
"Following a successful national trial we will now be adding unique barcodes to all our regular ‘everyday’ Definitive and Christmas stamps. Each barcoded stamp will have a digital twin and the two will be connected by the Royal Mail App. The unique barcodes will facilitate operational efficiencies, enable the introduction of added security features and pave the way for innovative services for our customers.
"The new barcoded stamps enable you to watch and share an exclusive Shaun the Sheep video via the barcode itself using the Royal Mail App. You or the recipient can watch the video just by scanning the stamp barcode using our App. More videos will be added over the coming months."
But apart from Shaun the Sheep, what additional innovative services have been added? None as far as I am aware.
But one of the other first postal authorities in the world to add unique barcodes to stamps, Germany, has developed their barcodes to provide more detail, as I found out when a reader in Germany sent me a Christmas postcard.
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| Scanning the barcode with an ordinary QI reader produces very little information. |
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| Postcard posted from Munich Germany 15 December 2025. |
This is what the sender wrote:
The Deutsche Post stamp barcode base tracking isn’t even that detailed (only the fact that the letter has passed intermediate and final sorting centres), but it’s appreciated. It would probably be easy for RM to implement the same if they decided to.
Interestingly, while there are 2 stamps making up the airmail value, there’s only 1 piececode associated with them. I found this out when I scanned them in the app. During the purchase, the postal clerk scanned both stamps’ barcodes & did some inputs into their computer.
This is what the Deutsche Post website shows (they have an English option).
Further information about 'Basic Tracking':
What is basic letter tracking?
I assume that if the card had been sent to a domestic address then the latest entry would show the 'final sorting centre' as the one that delivered to the addressee. Being international with no link with Royal Mail, Cologne West was as far as it is recorded.
The extra effort of scanning and (presumably) putting the address into the system at Post Office branches would probably require additional payment from Royal Mail to Post Office Ltd, and hence to the postmaster. However, it would bring extra footfall into the branches which might be additional benefit.
A benefit for collectors and anybody who is interested in the stamp on their letter/card is found by clicking on 'More about this motif' which produces this very useful dropdown:
The last line, More information, describes why datamatrix-coded stamps have been issued and provides a YouTube video showing how you can track the progress of an ordinary letter even when it is dropped into a street postbox. The letter is scanned in the DP app, and then you can give it an identity (card to Norvic) and then track it through the system. It would be possible to tell the addressee when it was at the final delivery office.
Not shown on the picture above is a further line which translates as 'More information about the stamp'. Clicking on that, and then translating with Google Translate produces a wealth of information about these pictorial definitives:
Permanent series "World of Letters - Airmail"
Artistically, imaginatively, surreal - this is how the motifs of the new postage stamp series "World of Letters" can be described in a nutshell. In a playful way, she combines the most diverse worlds of life with the letter, the most personal ambassador in the world, and creates an original overall picture that invites you to collect and brings the desire to write to new life.
The possibilities of messaging are diverse and have a long history. Also "Luftpost", the motif of the new postage stamp of the series "World of Letters", is older than some may believe. For millennia, the pigeon served as a postman until the French brothers Montgolfier in the 18th. century a hot air balloon, the so-called Montgolfière, developed. From now on, man could lift himself up into the air. However, the breakthrough of the airmail was achieved with the invention of the aircraft. On the 17. December 1903 the world's first motorized flight took place. The Wright brothers did not have letters in their luggage that day, but already in 1911, as part of an exhibition in the Indian Allahabad, letters and postcards were officially transported in a biplane for the first time. With the permission of the Reich Post Office, a plane was used for the first time in Germany for the first time in 1912 at the postcard week "Flugpost am Rhein und am Main".
A particular interest in airmail receipts are stamp collectors who are committed to aerophilately. The stamps and stamps used are of importance here, but also the circumstances - for example, rescued mail items from accidental aircraft are sought after. The crowning achievement of such a collection, however, is the "Inverted Jenny," an American stamp misprint from 1918, in which the pictured double-decker Curtiss JN-4 was printed with the nickname "Jenny" traffic. With only a hundred known copies, the misprint of the first U.S. airmail brand is a valuable rarity.
I haven't taken the trouble to edit the errors in the translation as most people will understand the meaning.
Obviously with Royal Mail only applying datamatrix codes to definitive and Christmas stamps the scope is far more limited, but imagine how much information the could have provided to people who were interested in these six cathedrals (or at least the five that people might have had on their cards).
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| Christmas 2024 miniature sheet showing Cathedrals. |
What do you think?
A case of "more haste, less speed" by Royal Mail: rushing to costly implementation of an innovation which might be superseded before it pays back the investment, and with no real idea of what to do with it; or maybe they believed their own publicity (and thought that 'if we build it, they (high-paying advertising clients) will come')?
ReplyDeleteI don't know how any 'high-paying advertising clients' could ever be involved?
DeleteOne thing that adding the codes has brought about is the vast reduction in fake definitives being available and used.
If Royal Mail were able to add the ability to use the data matrix code to provide basic tracking, similar to Deutsche Post, that could enable proof of posting to be obtained when dropping stamped mail or parcels in a letter box. This is even more relevant now that letter boxes are being converted to accept small parcels.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I don’t think Royal Mail will ever do this because they seem not to do anything that might encourage the use of stamps on mail, preferring labels instead.