Our business
In
2008 I announced to customers that the increasing
Royal Mail stamp programme meant that production of our own design
first day covers would have to stop because there was not the time to
do justice to the product.
The
following year we stopped servicing any
first day covers or PHQ cards. One of the purposes of this was to
enable us to delve into accumulated stamps, postal history, FDCs,
etc, to make them available to buy. But it was not to be.
The
2009 introduction by Royal Mail of security features to self-adhesive
Machin definitives, and developments in 2010 showed that this would
be an ongoing specialism that needed serving, with information as
much as with stamps. The accumulations of other material that I
wanted so much to move out of the office and into your collections
didn't move much at all!
And
so from 2019, because the proliferation of Walsall-printed Machins
with their various phosphor and fluorescent variants took up so much
time last year, I decided that we would no longer stock new Machins,
although we would continue to supply information about them.
So
what has been the result? Well, I've spent more time away from the
office than before. I have been sorting postal history and working
on my own collections (!), and have scanned, packeted and indexed
stock ready to add to the shop in due course. The only major
addition (apart from a few 2019 Machins) has been the previous block
of Machins, those elliptically perforated – the Gibbons' Y-numbers
– and associated booklets.
Not
as many additions as I would have liked, but a little more order
here. And some decisions about the future. Nothing fundamental at
present, but certainly scope in 2020 and beyond to make more
available and to find an audience for it.
And
what of 2019?
The
Special Stamp Programme
Royal
Mail got off to a bad start in 2019 when they released pictures for
some of the year's new
issues – and experts in the field soon told
them that they had got a D-Day image wrong: it showed US troops
landing in Dutch New Guinea. Cue red faces at RM and the design
agency.
As
usual, there was mixed reaction from readers to the special stamp
programme with many collectors condemning the cost of most issues and
the excessive number and values in sets. The same collectors
exercised themselves trying to work out what the several heavily
embargoed issues would be.
They
also criticised Royal Mail for their policy of allowing
cover-producers to show stamps, for not controlling the staff in
retail outlets (Post Office branches) some of whom had no qualms
about talking about, showing and even selling stamps before the
embargo date, and even their own web-team for making stamp products
available for pre-order before the date we were allowed to show them
on the blog. Some were offered on eBay before we were allowed to
show them, and there were reports that some Post Offices “didn't
know what date they should be sold”.
(Just as an aside, take a look at the 2011 programme, published here in February 2010.)
The
Cricket World Cup win by the England men's team was marked by a miniature
sheet, but Royal Mail decided to double the cost by marking the
Women's team win two years earlier, and then delaying the issue for over
two months because of 'congestion in the stamp programme'.
They managed to shoe-horn four PSBs into the programme – Leonardo
Da Vinci, Marvel Comics, Queen Victoria, and Star Wars III, with the Da
Vinci and Queen Victoria selling out well before the normal end of
sale date. The Star Wars PSB included an obsolete value of £1.17
due to mis-communication between Royal Mail and Cartor.
Machin
and Country Definitives
Laundering
and Forgeries.
There
were at least two successful prosecutions for washing used stamps and
reselling them for use which resulted in prison sentences for the
offenders.
There
have been a wealth of forgeries this year. Some of these were
straightforward (and in some cases very good, but other cases very
obvious) copies of 2nd,
1st
red and the two Large stamps.
But
there was also a bewildering array of forged self-adhesive country
definitives in various values, and in some cases in the wrong colour,
and Christmas stamps from several past years, some of them in the
small definitive size instead of larger as issued. Amazingly the £5
blue Accession anniversary stamp was also forged!
Royal
Mail do occasionally spot forgeries of the current NVIs and surcharge
the recipients – but just as often they seem to raise surcharges on
perfectly valid but older (pre-security) stamps and those in 'wrong'
colours such as 1st class black.
New
stamps
All
the expected stamps appeared with new year codes, but some for the
first time by ISP Walsall. The first ISP printings of each value were distributed as non-visible
change by Royal Mail, and were available for ad-hoc orders, so there
was no need for dealers to stock quite as many. The delayed 1st
class Signed For, and the high values (£2-£5) were reprinted, the
two top values for the first time since 2009.
Lack
of oversight of printers by Royal Mail continued. The Marvel PSB
Machins were missing the P;
there were disappointingly different
shades for the stamps in the Victoria PSB, both Machins and Victoria
reprints; and the Wales 1st
class country definitive was reprinted with the old font – but a
new cylinder number. This didn't happen when the Scotland 1st
was reprinted. They year ended with the inclusion of a £1.17 value in the fourth PSB
as mentioned above.
There
were more red faces and apologies when RM increased their inland
prices a week earlier than permitted by the regulator. The tariff
increases produced six new Machins for the airmail rates (costing
over £15), and 8 new country definitives.
Stanley
Gibbons' lack of foresight once again meant that they needed space
for new stamps within the security definitive listings (U-numbers) so
batches of these were reassigned requiring dealers to use both
numbers while collectors (who may not have bought the new edition of
the Concise
catalogue) caught up.
Post
and Go – There were no new designs,
but there were some new printings, as needed. Branches continued to
use stamps in the wrong place, so 2nd
class stock being used for 1st
class (and airmail) stamps and 1st
class stock being used for 2nd
class.
And
readers have been monitoring the comings and goings of SSKs at PO
branches with a record 90 comments on the main (14 May) post.
New
additional inscriptions (also called overprints) were used at The
Postal Museum – not without
confusion and embarrassment as Royal
Mail dithered and changed their mind on the Crime in the Post
exhibition – and at the military museums.
It
was only at Shakespeare Trust machine that things went really wrong with two inscriptions on one stamp (see left).
Machines were removed where un(der)used – from some Royal Mail
Enquiry Offices, from the East Anglian Railway Museum, and from MOD
Abbey Wood (Bristol). On the other hand the off-shore islands and
Gibraltar continued to provide dealers with something to sell to
collectors.
News
about Post Offices
has been confined mainly to reporting about the Group Litigation
against Post Office Ltd by former Subpostmasters who were sacked, and
in some cases prosecuted and even jailed for alleged theft or false accounting. In all cases POL lost, and
in the end settlement was reached by mediation before the costly
court action was half done. Many think that despite a payout of
nearly £60M it is the Post Office that won.
The
final judgement at least allowed for cases of malicious prosecution
to be raised, and the judge referred to the Director of Public
Prosecutions, a dossier about evidence from IT company Fujitsu.
Other
aspects that we have had to report are the repeated early-release of
stamps, and branches' failure to properly cancel stamps on those
items which Royal Mail would really like them to do. It seems RM
take little care to control their agent, knowing that they can rely
on the public not to re--use uncancelled stamps (see above).
Postboxes
RM
took every opportunity to paint selected postboxes in new colours, including yellow and dark
blue or
to decorate them with hearts, or elves! Events marked included St. Valentine's Day, World Book Day,
D-Day, Red Nose Day and the ICC Cricket World Cup, with talking
postboxes reintroduced for Christmas.
Postmark
slogans
Collectors
have benefitted from the continuing and almost constant stream of
information from a regular band of reporters on new slogan postmarks,
re-use of the Universal machines, and other oddities. Our thanks to
you all.
2020
Stamp Programme.
First
news on this came from TalkTV and The Mirror in April, with reports that
Coronation Street would be featured on it's 60th
anniversary. The full programme will be announced on 7 January
and you will be able to see it here on that date. There are no 'TBA' entries for once: I would suggest it's not for those of a nervous disposition! [Update 31 December: I understand that advice notes from Royal Mail to standing order customers have already revealed the title of the first issue, see the comments on this blog.]
The
business
Next
year will involve some diversions from the business for domestic
matters, but I hope also to introduce some more older Machins, and
other stock, which includes postal history, picture postcards from
the UK and worldwide. If there is anything you would particularly
like to see, do let us know.
One
again our thanks to all our customers, and the readers of this blog
and especially to the many contributors. I intend to go to the
London 2020 event in May for a day or two, and maybe to some
provincial events. Do say hello if you spot me!
Our
office will be closed from 21 - 31 December: the shop will be open
and we will process orders as soon as we can, with the aim to post
every Thursday in the New Year.
We
wish you all a very Merry Christmas and
a
Happy and Successful New Year!
Akureyri Church, Iceland
