News snippets June 2024

This post has a collection of short pieces not really warranting a whole blog post of their own.

Beyond the Definitives

Last year we discussed what products would need to change apart from postage stamps, with Horizon and Post & Go Labels being obvious examples.

Horizon Labels bearing the head of the King have appeared, but not Post and Go - although Royal Mail stopped using Post & Go machines at the end of the year, so no replacement was necessary there. The existing stamps continue in use at Post Office self-service kiosks, although there are trials of a new label which does bear the profile of King Charles.

A couple of readers have reminded me that although there is no postal stationery on sale now other than the prepaid plastic Special Delivery bags.  However the Houses of Parliament, and in particular members, are entitled to use prepaid postal stationery which currently still bears the Machin head. Both 1st (provided by RM) and 2nd class (from RW) are in use.

House of Commons prepaid 2nd class envelope used June 2024.

House of Commons prepaid 1st class envelope used May 2024.

Counterfeit Stamps

Thanks to BB for alerting me to more counterfeit non-definitive stamps being sold on eBay.  The current range now includes the Discworld, Cats, Christmas including miniature sheets, Paddington Bear and Children's TV Classics.  OK, they might be genuine, but it's clear from this photograph that there are no phosphor bands whereas there should be two.

2022 1st class 'Cats' stamps which should have two phosphor bands....

Catalogue Numbers

Thanks to CN who has alerted me to changes of numbers of the King Charles booklets in the Stanley Gibbons Concise Catalogue 2024, as follows:

TB2 - 4x 1^st   now    CB1

TC2 - 8x 2^nd   now    CC1

TD2 - 8x 1^st   now   CD1 

TE2 - 4x 2^nd L now   CE1

TF2 - 4x 1^st L  now    CF1 

.............

M24L printings

CN also tells me about the new printing of the booklet of 8 x 2nd class stamps, now with M24L year code.  Here's his picture:

King Charles III 2nd class booklet stamp coded MEIL and M24L, 2024 printing.

JH has provided a good photograph of the whole booklet.

King Charles III 2nd class booklet with stamps coded MEIL and M24L, 2024 printing.

Philatelic Bureau mail

Back in 2014 we reported that Royal Mail was using real stamps (stuck over the PPI) on sendings of bulletins from Tallents House.  Sadly this practice didn't last long.

Set of 2014 Butterfly stamps used on mailings from Royal Mail Tallents House, Edinburgh.

Few philatelic bureaux do use stamps on their sendings (Isle of Man and Greenland do, I think), but Guernsey has made up for not using stamps by advertising them on their envelopes!  My thanks to RM for sending this and other interesting material.

Guernsey Post envelope used in 2024 for sending out stamp orders, illustrated with examples from previous stamp issues.

That's all for now, thanks for reading, and keep sending your news - thanks!

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Post and GOne – Royal Mail announce P&G Closing at Christmas 2023.

Royal Mail Stamps and Collectibles has announced the closure of Post and Go.

"Following a thorough review of our Post & Go Kiosks we have taken the decision to end all remaining Post & Go activities by the end of this year.

"Several factors have contributed to this decision including the fact that there has been no new Post and Go issues for several years and the change of Monarch would now require new issues to be re-introduced.

"Existing kiosks will remain operational through until Christmas, including a final overprint on certain kiosks, details of these will be shared by our operational partners at IAR soon. 

"All remaining Post & Go kiosks will shut down on 31st December 2023 and be removed from all sites shortly afterwards."

Background to Post and Go, original website article 2008.

 

Original Wincor-Nixdorf installation at Birmingham Post Office October 2008.

Edit: NB this announcement only applies to Royal Mail machines provided by IAR, installed in museums.

I have enquired as to the situation regarding Jersey Post, Guernsey Post and Gibraltar Post which all use IAR machines, and about Post Office Self-Service Kiosks which use different machines.

UPDATE 5 September - replies from Postal Administrations.

 

Guernsey Stamps

@guernseystamps

Good morning. We have no plans to withdraw our Post & Go machines. We'll be releasing our 2024 stamp schedule in the near future with full details of what's coming up next year.

 

Jersey Stamps

@JerseyStamps

Morning  We also have no plans to withdraw the machines, keep an eye out next year for new issues!

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Post and Go news in 2022

As I mentioned in November, I now aim to have a Post and Go post (and comment thread) for each year, so this is the first post for 2022.  Malcolm has already provided a comment on the November post about what happened when The Postal Museum re-opened, but I have copied this here so that we have something to start the year with.  And of course it has a glitch - well an oddity I think.  Read on!

Postal Museum changes 1 January 2022

Reader Malcolm reports: After service on the 31st December, the Winter Greenery stock was removed and from Saturday 1st January 2022 it was replaced with Union Flag undated stock for 1st class and MA15 2nd class Machin, but without the Wish You Were Here inscription.  This did continue on the 1st class, ending at close of business on Sunday 2nd January.

The museum was then closed on its usual Monday and Tuesday, reopening on Wednesday 5th with the Wish You Were Here inscription now removed from the 1st class Machin, so therefore a new variety of strip was available, being the first time with the Europe and Worldwide Large strips have been available without a commemorative overprint.

For the first half hour of operation on 5th, the stock was MA13, and it was then replaced with MA14 stock subsequently.

UPDATE 12 January: Malcolm has sent these pictures from the Postal Museum:

January 2022 Postal Museum Post and Go 1st class stamps, MA13 (left) and MA14.

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UPDATE 19 January: The Commonwealth Stamps Opinion blog reports the latest Post and Go imprints from Jersey and Guernsey. 

The Jersey issue was actually on 6 December 2021 and marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the island's Finance Industry, as it was 1961 when banks started establishing offshore branches to meet the growing demands of British customers living or working abroad. The additional inscription is applied to all six colours of the Jersey Arms stamps.

Jersey Arms Post and Go stamp with inscription marking 60 Years of the Finance Industry.

On 17 February Jersey Post will issue a new set of 'Harvest of the Sea' Post and Go stamps in six new designs. (Via Gulfmann ATM Collection blog).

Jersey 'Harvest of the Sea' Post and Go stamps (1 of 6) issued 17 February 2022

Meanwhile on 19 February Guernsey Post will issue a set of six new designs entitled Guernsey Cuisine, all are pictured on the CSO blog.

Guernsey 'Cuisine' Post and Go stamp (1 of 6) issued 19 February 2022

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UPDATE 16 February. Thanks to Malcolm B for news from The Postal Museum regarding its output for the London 2022 International Exhibition.  

The London 2022 inscription is on the 1st class Machin stamps on machine A001 in The Postal Museum and on the Post Office London Railway stamp on machine A013 in Mail Rail.  It will run from next Saturday (19th February) to the end of Saturday 26th February. 

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Update 4 April - Postal Museum

A new exhibition is running at the Postal Museum from 30 March 2022 – 1 January 2023 entitled Sorting Britain: The Power of Postcodes. This delves into the Post Office innovation that revolutionised how post was processed, sorted, and delivered and its unintended outcomes for life in Britain.

Thanks to Malcolm we can show the Post & Go strips that are associated with this exhibition, which have an additional 'Sorting Britain' imprint.  

He writes: Update on Postal Museum went ahead as planned Machin was MA13 stock and Flag MA19 stock (first time here). Mail by Air went in as R19 stock and was available as a first class strip however also available were all the other values of a collector strip although this was not available as an option.

Postal Museum Post and Go stamps: Machin MA13 and Union Flag MA19 with
Sorting Britain imprint; and Mail by Air MA19 stock without that imprint all from machine A001

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UPDATE 3 June 2022.  To mark the Platinum Jubilee of HM Queen Elizabeth II the Postal Museum is resurrecting the Machin Anniversary set with a new imprint: their (edited) press release:

The Postal Museum is set to release a new inscription on its Post & Go machines to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee.

The inscription “The Postal Museum/The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee” will be printed on the multicoloured “Machin 50th anniversary” stamps and will run from 3 June to 1 July 2022.

Each of six anniversary Machin stamps is a different colour and will be overprinted with the standard UK first class (up to 100g) value. They will temporarily replace the existing “Mail by Air” stamps for the duration of the Jubilee inscription. These stamps will be available from the Post & Go machine in the museum’s welcome space, either singly or in strips of six.

The inscription “Mail Rail/The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee” will be printed on standard “Machin first class” stamps of all values. These stamps will be available as a collector’s strip of six and as individual values from the Post & Go machine in the Mail Rail’s welcome space from 3 June to 1 July 2022.

The Postal Museum will be joining other Royal Mail Post & Go sites in offering this Jubilee inscription - the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) site at HMS Victory in Portsmouth, NMRN Submarine Museum in Gosport, NMRN Explosion Museum also in Gosport, Fleet Air Arm Museum in Ilchester, HMS Trincomalee in Hartlepool, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford Upon Avon and STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway in Swindon.

Postal Museum Platinum Jubilee Post & Go set from pre-release publicity image.

Thanks to Mike I can also show the actual stamps from both machines:

Postal Museum and Mail Rail Platinum Jubilee Post & Go set

Doug couldn't have missed Mike by many minutes judging by the session numbers (7821 & 0840) of his strips.  Both reported it quiet (apart from families visiting the museum) and Mike said that he "didn’t see any of the ‘usual’ dealers there."

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UPDATE 8 June: My thanks to AH who writes:

Thanks to your blog, I bought six of the Platinum Jubilee Post & Go stamps on Saturday and had one of them used on the envelope.  It was cancelled with a cds for 4th June and also received an example of the Platinum Jubilee slogan on its travels (but this is not very clear).

The thanks are, of course, equally due to other readers and contributors.  This is the stamp, which we can see comes from machine A009 which is still, as far as I know, at the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford.  We have recorded past instances of Shakespeare output with their logo and the new inscription occupying the same position on the stamp which is probably why the logo is missing here, giving no indication of where the stamp was printed.  Are other museum outputs like this on this occasion?

Platinum Jubilee inscription on Post and Go stamp from machine A009, Stratford's Shakespeare Centre.

 

UPDATE 17 JUNE:  John MacCullum has sent these images of the two relevant special handstamps on the Postal Museum Platinum Jubilee stamps:

London special handstamp for HM The Queen's Platinum Jubilee on Postal Museum Platinum Jubilee Post and Go stamp 3 June 2022

London special handstamp for The Postal Museum, London WC1 on Postal Museum Platinum Jubilee Post and Go stamp 3 June 2022

 

Jubilee UPDATE 13 July: My thanks to MC for (a couple of weeks ago) sending this picture of the Platinum Jubilee inscription added to the Swindon Steam GWR stamps. The stock is MA13.

Platinum Jubilee inscription added to the Swindon Steam GWR stamps

UPDATE 19 August:   Thanks to Malcolm for sending these images of the 2nd class Post & Go stamps coded CL21S purchased from York.

UPDATE 12 November 2022.  I haven't included examples of all changes here, but my thanks to Malcolm for sending this image of the Postal Museum's Lest We Forget 2022 inscription on the MA15 Poppy stamp.

The Postal Museum Lest We Forget 2022 inscription on MA15 Poppy stamp.

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UPDATE 27 June.  My thanks to correspondent JJ who tells us that Spain will issue a set of variable value (Post and Go) stamps on 7 July dedicated to the Pride parade.

Spain: Pride Post and Go stamp 7 July 2022.

 

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All news about P&G in 2022 will be here or in the comments below.

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A new post for 2023 has now been set up here.  This one will be closed for new comments soon.

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Post and Go at Scottish Congress

As previously announced there will be no Royal Mail P&G presence at the Scottish Philatelic Congress in Perth this year (20-21 April).

However, the offshore islands and Gibraltar have been persuaded to attend and IAR reports that they will each be dispensing two types of stamps.

Congress organisers have confirmed that there will be no facility for orders by post this year.

With Royal Mail having postponed attending events and having looked at previous years it was felt there was not a significant demand for Jersey stamps.

Collectors who are interested in obtaining these stamps are advised to contact the relevant postal authorities who may be selling them via their bureaux.

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Post and Go overhaul

As previously mentioned, Royal Mail are cutting back on the Post and Go programme this

year,  although they have not made a specific announcement about just how much.  Already we know that they are not having kiosks at either Spring Stampex or the Scottish Congress in Perth, and I have been told unofficially that they will not be taking their machines to the political party congresses in the autumn. 

Partly because of this we have taken time to look over our Post and Go stock and ensuring that all our stock is actually listed in our webshop, that all is in the correct category and will be selected under the 'Faststamps/Post and Go' heading.  We've also adjusted many prices - now is the chance to get some you may have missed many at lower prices than advertised elsewhere.  Included are stamps printed in Australia, Hong Kong and Korea, and some of the newer digital printing versions of earlier stamps.

As with Machin Security Stamps, when Post and Go (or Faststamps as they were called) were first FS numbers.
While we were waiting for Gibbons to produce the first entries, we set about our own numbering system, partly because we wanted to list the stamps logically in our stock. So those available from Post Offices and elsewhere with no additional inscriptions were allocated
produced, there was no catalogue listing. When Stanley Gibbons catalogue editors did compile a listing it was fairly straightforward, with one catalogue number assigned to each of the five original values.

The localised or commemorative inscriptions (variously and incorrectly described as either underprints or overprints by some) to stamps sold at Stampex and international exhibitions, are in the FT series.

Stamps issued from machines at the BPMA, Postal Museum, local stamp fairs and exhibitions, and military and other museums and attractions are listed in FV series. We stock very few of these.

Our stock is listed on our webshop here.   The software arranges stock in a certain logicality, but it is not completely intuitive even in our system.   Some first day covers are also available.

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Autumn Stampex report

As usual I went to London Stampex in Islington on Thursday.  It was moderately busy with several people looking at the exhibits - there were many displays of postal history, and some good examples of Machin decimal covers, which it is always good to see as more attention is being given to modern material.

The Royal Mail stand was reasonably busy with the relatively new Royal Mail staff from Sunderland who have thereby met the collectors face-to-face and thereby learned more about their idiosyncrasies!

As far as I know - and I've had few reports - there have been no Post and Go errors. A steady dribble of people were buying some of the stamps, but it is no longer a battle.  If you left a credit card in the machine you wouldn't now find the next buyer rushing over to give it to you, but could go back a few minutes later to collect it!

Left to right: Machin Anniversary with Autumn Stampex 2017 inscription (only 1st class)
Poppy MA15 with WWI Battle of Passchendaele inscription (6 values)
Mail by Air collectors set of 6 values.

Jersey and Guernsey both had Prince Philip inscriptions on their flag stamps, with Jersey selling their new Fruit and Berries set and Guernsey continuing the Lighthouse stamps issued in February.

(As in all cases, click on the images for larger views)

The Post and Go offerings from Gibraltar Post were a surprise as I hadn't seen any publicity about them before Stampex, and can't find anything on the official or IAR website.

The Year of the Rooster stamp, issued earlier in the year and available at Spring Stampex in the usual strips of 4, was this time sold with the additional inscription Autumn Stampex 2017, and the collectors strip, this time of of 6, consisted of Local 50g, Spain 50g, UK 20g, EU 20g, Worldwide 20g and Worldwide 40g stamps.  The other reel dispensed what I think is a new issue - not mentioned on the Gibraltar Post website.

These were available in the same Collectors Strip values as the Year of the Rooster shown below.

As for the rest of Stampex, I don't go intending to buy much and this time ended up with far more modern British postal history than I expected!  I'll report on them on my other blog in due course.

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Autumn Stampex Post and Go

We have some information about the Post and Go stamps available at Autumn Stampex, which is at the Business Design Centre, Islington, London N1, from 13-16 September 2017.


Royal Mail Bureau Machine B001

Now available to pre-order, the following stamps:

Mail by Air - available as 6 x 1st class, Collectors Strip of 6 values, or Collectors set of 36 (6 values of each design).

Machin Anniversary, with additional inscription Autumn Stampex 2017 - available only as 6 x 1st.

Remembrance Poppy with additonal inscription WWI Battle of Passchendaele - available as 6 x 1st class, or Collectors Strip of 6 values.


We also have unofficial information about the kiosks at Stampex. 
The Mail by Air stamps will be available from machines A012, A103 and A104.
The Machin stamps will be available from A012 and A013.
The Poppy stamps will be available from machine A014.

Unofficial information concerning other Post and Go stamps

September 13th will be the first day of issue of Jersey Post's new Post and Go design, Fruits and Berries, which will be dispensed from kiosk JE01. 
The machine will also dispense the Jersey Flag stamp with an additional inscription: HRH Prince Philip 65 Years of Service.

The Fruits stamps will also be available from Jersey's Broad Street JE01 machine, and both Fruits and Flag with Prince Philip inscription will be available from the Bureau B002 machine.

Available at Stampex from Guernsey Post's GG01 machine will be the Guernsey Flag stamp with a HRH Prince Philip 65 Years of Service inscription. 
Reel 2 will contain the Lighthouse stamps.  The stamps will be available after Stampex from the B machine at their Bureau by visiting www.guernseystamps.com or contacting philatelic customer services on +44 (0) 1481 716486.

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As usual we will obtain stamps to order.  Customers requiring the Royal Mail output from machine B001 must let us know by midday Wednesday 30 August.

A very limited number of 1st class stamps will be obtained for stock for those who only want single stamps.

Customers requiring Jersey and Guernsey from the Stampex kiosks stamps must let us know by 5 September.

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Post and Go News: Postal Museum, Guernsey, Jersey, and others

Press Release:

Change of Overprint and New Post and Go Stamps at The Postal Museum

LONDON, 16 August 2017 – The Postal Museum has announced today that its ‘Official Opening’ inscription will end on all designs on Tuesday 12 September. It will be replaced with the words ‘The Postal Museum’ (without the organisation’s envelope logo) across all designs the following day, Wednesday 13 September.

Coinciding with the first day of Stampex, there will also be changes to the designs available from The Postal Museum’s A0001 machine. Royal Mail Heritage: Mail by Air (six designs – first class only) will replace the Union Flag (all values), which will no longer be available.

The following stamps will be on sale from Wednesday 13 September:

• Royal Mail Heritage: Mail by Air (six designs – first class only)
• Machin 50 Commemoratives (six designs - 1^st class only)
• Machin (2^nd Class only)
• Underground Railway (all values)
• Mail Coach (all values)

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Inscription Errors for Guernsey Visiting Liners

GM from Jersey writes:

The uptake on the current visiting cruise ship issues from Guernsey has not been great. My agent over there has picked up errors in the spelling of the ships names, most recently Sliver Spirit  instead of Silver Spirit, which was spotted and corrected on the day.  [See below §]


He also writes about various errors on Jersey Post and Go stamps, including

combinations of blank and correct printings

Battle of Hastings underprint with sword but no descriptive lettering.

half printed underprint lettering due to slipping within the roll of  stamps

error, underprint RAFA on endangered species issues.

Is Post and Go worthwhile for Jersey?  Apparently only if collectors buy the stamps, as GM also reports:

JE02  is very little used except by me. For example I have experienced the session numbers increase by only 1 or 2 over a period of 10 days!

For more on the dubious output of Jersey's Philatelic Bureau and that of the Isle of Man, take a look at the Commonwealth Stamps Opinion Blog.

§ I've had a response from the Head of Philatelic at Guernsey Post in response to the comments.

a. The error of Sliver for Silver is the only error that has been reported and was corrected on the same day.

b. "the uptake among the audience for which the products were primarily intended - cruise ship passengers -  were healthy and we are delighted to have supported the Visit Guernsey initiative by offering Post & Go products to passengers"

I'm happy to publish this response from Guernsey.
 

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The National Museum of the Royal Navy

Kiosk A002 in Portsmouth will have the following inscriptions starting Saturday 19 August and ending 18 September to celebrate the arrival of the HMS Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth.

Union Flag

Royal Navy

QEII Carrier 2017

Machin

Royal Navy

Queen Elizabeth II Carrier 2017

These stamps can only be obtained from the Museum.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Chris for sending these images:

UPDATE:
As noted by the anonymous contributor, the inscription on these is incorrect as the carrier is actually HMS Queen Elizabeth - don't be surprised if there are changes here!

UPDATE 25 August
We have now been told that the inscriptions have changed to correct this error: I'm trying to find out when it changed.  But it was not changed until 1020 on 29 August!

Thanks to Chris H we can now show the stamps with the corrected inscription and receipt:

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As before, we will not be stocking these Post and Go stamps.  An announcement about Autumn Stampex will be made shortly.

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Guernsey Post relents on Cruise Ships Post and Go

We reported earlier that Guernsey Post would be providing their Lighthouse Post and Go stamps from the Smith Street PO with additional inscriptions for each cruise ship visit during the summer.

They decided, with some logical thought, that their standing order customers would not want between 55 and 75 additional sets of Post and Go stamps, and said, therefore, that they would not be available through the philatelic service but only in person.  Needless to say, some collectors decided that they would like to fill their stockbooks - and Guernsey Post's coffers - and complained.

Guernsey Post have now sent a letter to subscribers, an extract of which is shown below.

The first underprint on the Lighthouse stamps on the 21 st April will also be provided as a standing order item to customers.

Due to the number of ships visiting we recognised that it would be unreasonable to expect our customers to purchase every underprint which is why we initially stated they
would not be available from the bureau.

However after receiving feedback from numerous collectors we are now willing to take orders for the cruise ship underprints. However we would like to stress that these will not be a standing order item and orders will need to be placed for them separately. Please use the form enclosed or contact our customers services team at your earliest convenience on +44(0)1481 716486 or email philatelic@guernseypost.com

Please note that due to the large amount of administration required for these orders the
dispatch of all cruise ship underprints will be in September after our cruise ship offering has ended. Also each strip will incur a 50p administration fee in line with our current GG02 products.

So, they listened, and they acted.  And I hope that people who really want to have a complete collection will be pleased with these arrangements.    A collectors strip will cost £3.70 + 50p admin up until 1 st May 2017.   From 2nd May 2017 due to an increase in postal rates each strip will be £4.06 + 50p.  So a complete set will cost approaching £300.   One of the options offered is to have stamps for the first visit only for each ship.

Beware the slippery slope, though.  Will you buy next year's, and those from Gibraltar as well?

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Guernsey Post and Go Kiosk for Cruise Ship Season

Guernsey Post is delighted to announce that it will vend Post and Go stamps from its Smith Street Post Office in St Peter Port from 21 April until 31 August 2017.

Normally found at exhibitions around the world, Guernsey Post’s GG01 kiosk will arrive in Guernsey next week and will vend Guernsey flag stamp strips with the unique location identifier “Smith Street” overprint, which are available to Guernsey’s Post and Go collectors as part of the bureau’s Post and Go collection from 21 April.

In addition to the Post and Go stamps available to existing collectors, Guernsey Post’s kiosk will also vend its Bailiwick Lighthouses Post and Go stamps (right) specifically for cruise ship tourists visiting the island, in liaison with Visit Guernsey.

An additional inscription on the stamps will welcome cruise ship passengers to Guernsey’s shores, which will be updated each time a ship arrives into port.

Guernsey Post’s head of philatelic, Bridget Yabsley, said that the stamp bureau was confident that that the temporary addition of the exhibition kiosk would prove popular with existing collectors and holidaymakers visiting the island.

From the IAR website.  
My thanks to Chris for drawing attention to this. Chris asked, "How many cruise ships visit Guernsey?".

A quick online search produced the webpage of Clean Cruising, which lists a whopping 58 visits between 24 April and 15 September!  Some of these may be return visits, but I doubt that Guernsey Post will avoid a repeat use for a second or later visit.  One sample set from the first visit would probably be sufficient for most collectors.

UPDATE 12 April.
See comments on Guernsey Post's reluctance to provide these to collectors.  I've made some calls on twitter.  If you use Facebook etc you could make similar calls, and see what results.
UPDATE 18 APRIL
Guernsey Post will make these available to collectors - see new post.  (Thanks Peter R).

UPDATE on Shakespeare
Thanks to Commonwealth Stamps Blog we can show on the original news post the latest Stratford Post and Go stamps which actually have the inscription Shakespeare Week, not Schools week. Not an error, just misinformation.

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Spring Stampex 2017 report: Post and Go, Swiss Trials, but no crowds

As regular readers will recall I missed last Autumn's Stampex so I was looking forward to a day out in 'the smoke', revisiting the Business Design Centre at Islington for Spring Stampex, an oportunity to meet up with old friends and to hear Royal Mail put some flesh on their previously outlined plans for new stamps for the rest of the year.

As usual there were the Post and Go machines with several new offerings, including two different inscriptions on the Machin head stamps.  (This made up for not having any Machins last Autumn when the poppy stamp accompanied the ladybirds.)  But by midday on Thursday there were not many people buying huge quantities.  Dealers, of course, myself included pre-ordered our large stocks and picked these up from the Royal Mail counter.  These are from back-office machine B001.

You all know what the full six values look like, so I'm showing the 1st class stamps only:

One marks 50 years since the Machin portrait first made an appearance on definitive stamps (1967), and the other marks 65 years since the Accession of HM The Queen in 1952.

The new set continued Royal Mail's 'Postal Heritage' series which started a year ago with the Heritage Transport set, with Mail by Rail (more details here).

As well as the Royal Mail stamps, Guernsey Post, Jersey Post, and Gibraltar PO also had machines, and the most attractive set was of Guernsey Lighthouses.  A little dark, but some attractive designs, including lighthouses on Alderney and Sark.

Newcomer to the 'machine vended postage' market is the Isle of Man Post Office.  They haven't joined the 'Royal Mail Post and Go' group but instead are using refurbished machines from An Post, the postal service of the Republic of Ireland.

This first collection of four stamps is based on the Manx Three Legs of Man emblem which also known as a Triskelion. The legs usually run clockwise and carry the Latin motto 'Quocunque Jeceris Stabit' meaning 'whichever way you throw, I stand', a reference to the independence and resilience of the Manx people.The four versions of this emblem are based on:

• The three legs as they appear in Douglas Town Hall
• The Millenium of Tynwald three legs
• The three legs as seen on the old brewery building on Castletown Quay
• A modern interpretation of the three legs of man.

The stamps printed from this machine have - of course - a different datastring to the ones produced at the Bureau (it's not clear whether the values etc were printed by the stamp printed or afterwards in Douglas).  The Bureau strip has 4 different values, whereas the counter machine could produce four stamps at the basic 45p rate, a much cheaper option.  Also, the counter stamps have the value in a box.

The Royal Mail stand held few surprises.  The stock included the 2nd class M17L counter sheet which will be available from our webshop shortly.  I'm told the 1st class Wales country definitive from new cylinder 2 was also there.  This is a new printing with the one stamp produced in 4 panes, so all 4 of the grid positions are 'white'.

As in Spring 2016, Royal Mail produced a specially printed 'Stampex' version of the miniature sheet issued the same day.  The sheet is provided in a special souvenir pack, and quite attractive, but as with all presentation packs, totally impractical for displaying.  With a selling price 75% over face value not a 'must-have' for all collectors.

(Incidentally, when in the sleeve, the flap-over at the top of the pack obscures 'St George's Chapel' and the top of the stamps.  Have they overlooked the fact that this is supposed to show the stamps?!)

As last year this is a limited edition of 6,000 sold only at Stampex, and once again I don't expect them all to have sold, even with some dealers picking up extra before the show closed.   We will have a small number for sale on our webshop soon.  Royal Mail have promised that (again as last year) this will not be repeated at Autumn Stampex, but it may be next Spring.

But why?  There is no evidence that this attracts people to the show.  There is no proper head-count of visitors.  And why would anybody incur the cost of going to the show when they can pick one of the sheets up from a dealer afterwards for a lower overall cost?   This is simply a misguided initiative by people in the Philatelic Traders Society who are out of touch with the ordinary collectors of new Great Britain stamps.

Exhibitions
As usual I didn't have time to visit many, but did look at the Court of Honour display of Machin material, including original pencil sketches by Arnold Machin and the Cambridge University Colour Trials which were used to determine the colours to be used for the first of the new definitives back in the 1960s.  Very impressive, though it would have been better with better lighting and more room - and maybe better signposting.   Although it was the Court of Honour it wasn't highlighted on the floor layout plan in the catalogue - if you missed it, it was at stand 105 next to the Postal Museum stand.

And what of the show overall?
Well, I was only there from around midday until 5pm and 90 minutes of that time was spent in discussion with Royal Mail about the 2017 programme.  The crowds were not as thick as in previous years though maybe not much different to last year.  Go back 10, 20, 30 years and of course there were more visitors - there were more collectors then!  As usual, the smaller dealers with smaller booths had more visitors: they concentrate on a range of collecting interests, especially the lower end of the market.  As usual the auction houses and bigger dealers with bigger booths had fewer visitors: it didn't just look that way because they had more space, they concentrate on higher-end material for which there are fewer customers with fat cheque-books.  But these companies pay more for their stands and contribute heavily to the cost of running the show, so we must expect a degree of 'white space' in the overall page.

As with any show dealers will probably report mixed results.  One UK-based dealer in mainly American material has written, "Just back from my most successful Spring London Stampex since my first one in 2007 ....  and this with a fall in value of the Pound vs Dollar of 1/3 during the past decade."

However, this comment from my fellow-blogger WhiteKnight is worth some thought!

Read more of his thoughts here.


Did you visit Stampex this time?  What did you think of the show?

Should the duration be reduced once again, to only 3 days?

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