Random Offers - quirky and unusual - Week 47.

It was a busy weekend, partly dealing with customer orders for discount postage so this is the first offer for this week.  Update: second offer added (E)

Items offered have now been consolidated to one place, which is a linked page, rather than a blogpost.   

D. Ephemera mixed bag, pick and choose - Free to blog followers!

D1 - Machin black postcard from the National Postal Museum 1981, printed by the House of Questa, issued to mark Ten Years of Decimal Machins.  [One available].

D2. - Machin blackprint by Harrison & Sons 15 February 1971 [One available].

D3. - British Postal Order Gift Card (undated).  Designed to hold a standard postal order of the time in the same way as Book Tokens and Store Gift Cards, for sending through the post.  [Two available.]

 

D4. - Telephone Stamp Card issued by Post Office Telecommunications in 1979, before British Telecom - and I thought Busby was a BT mascot.  Inside there's room for up to 20 Telephone stamps and this too could be used as a gift card to a friend or relative. Telephone Stamps could only be used to pay for telephone charges which, at the time, you could pay in cash at the PO counter.  [only 1 now available]

D5. Lastly a proper postal item - a parcel tag for the Royal Mail Parcels Direct Bag Service for mailings to Charities.  When this was used mailbags would be delivered to the charity intact, which made handling easier for Royal Mail and for the charity.  This may have been for the children's TV programme Blue Peter in 1994.  Just one of these available.

 

Pick and Choose: if you are interested in any or all of these, leave a comment which I shall publish as soon as I can, and say which ones you would like.  Then send me an email with your name and address and blog follower ID.

I'll mark the blog as soon as I can as individual items cease to be available.  

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E. It's what's inside that counts - Kent Air display 1935 - £10 including postage

When you buy mixed lots of covers you get some good, some ordinary, and some in quite poor condition.  Certainly this isn't a cover that would make it into a collection or display.

1935 cover posted locally at Margate with 1½d Jubilee stamp.

There isn't even anything on the even grubbier reverse to indicate where it cam from: without the contents it is nothing.  The letter, however, reveals that the addressee is a lucky prize-winner in the Isle of Thanet Gazette contest to win a free flight in an air display by Sir Alan Cobham.  

After service in WWI in the Royal Flying Corps and then the RAF he joined De Haviland as a test pilot. He flew around Europe, to Cape Town, and then to Australia leaving from the River Medway in Kent.

In 1932 he started the National Aviation Day displays – a combination of barnstorming and joyriding. This consisted of a team of up to fourteen aircraft, ranging from single-seaters to modern airliners, and many skilled pilots. It toured the country, calling at hundreds of sites, some of them regular airfields and some just fields cleared for the occasion. Generally known as "Cobham's Flying Circus", it was hugely popular, giving thousands of people their first experience of flying, and bringing "air-mindedness" to the population.  From 1933-35 there were two simultaneous tours throughout the season but these stopped after a fatal mid-air collision over Blackpool.

Letter from Gazette to lucky winner (divided scan - letter complete)

National Aviation Displays Ltd Display Flight Ticket.

Just one available, so if you would like this leave a comment which I shall publish as soon as I can.  Then send me an email with your name and address and blog follower ID.  I'll provide payment details as soon as I can.

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F. Welsh local? No, Argentine Cinderella!   -  SOLD.

This might appeal to collectors in Wales, or of Welsh material - especially if they live in Argentina - buenas tardes!

In 1865, a group of Welsh people grew tired of the English domination of their land and peoples. Led by the Reverend Michael Jones, this group took their ship, the Mimosa, and sailed to what became Port Madryn in Argentina. The group of about 150 people wished to find vacant land to occupy where they could preserve their culture and avoid the economic oppression they felt in Wales. 

In September 1965 the Argentine Government issued an 8 pesos stamp to commemorate the centenary of the Welsh colonisation of Patagonia. The stamp design shows the tea clipper Mimosa, which was specially converted into a passenger vessel for this voyage, against a map of the Province of Chubut, where the Welshmen made their settlement. They landed at Puerto Madryn, Patagonia on July 28, 1865, sailing from Liverpool on May 25. [Ships Stamps website]  

8 pesos Argentina stamp marking the centenary of the Welsh colonisation of Patagonia, depicting the Mimosa.

The early settlers livied in caves or pits dug into the ground, but they persevered until the building of the Patagonian Railway in 1886, which precipitated the expansion of the settlement. In 1965, their descendants issued a commemorative label to honor the centennial of the colony's founding.

Since the inscription "Post Cymru" (Welsh Post) occurs at both the right and left sides of the stamp, it is easily mistaken for a regional postal issue. Done in green with black, the stamps were issued in rouletted sheets of 50.

"Cwladfa Patagonia" (Colony of Patagonia) appears at the top right above a vignette of a black sailing ship approaching green cliffs. At the bottom, in black, is the inscription "Mimosa, Porth Madryn, 28 VII '65", indicating the date in July, 1865, that the colonists arrived. [Cinderellas Riga Stamps website]

"Cwladfa Patagonia" (Colony of Patagonia) commemorative label to honor the centennial of the colony's founding.

Again just one available - free of charge - so if you would like this leave a comment which I shall publish as soon as I can.  Then send me an email with your name and address and blog follower ID. 

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More to follow as I delve deeper into the boxes.  If you are looking for something unusual, drop me an email about it and if I have any, I'll let you know.

All offers are now in a separate page - see link on right under 'LINKS'   ➡︎➡︎➡︎➡︎➡︎➤

This will be expanded with more offers, and a brief post will be added in the blog for each week. 

Thanks for looking!

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Glasgow Prestwick Airport to be Royal Mail's intl e-commerce hub in UK

Reported in the STAT Trade Times Glasgow Prestwick Airport is to be Royal Mail’s newest international e-commerce hub in the United Kingdom (U.K.).

Prestwick was selected by Royal Mail due to the numerous benefits it offers over alternative airports throughout the U.K. including offering up to half of the cost of landing at some U.K. hubs, says a release from Prestwick. 

“We are confident that our new fast and efficient e-commerce solution will offer customers real cost savings against other U.K. air cargo hubs while also ensuring they meet their customer delivery-time promise,” says Nico Le Roux, Development Director, Glasgow Prestwick Airport. 

Florrie Kuang (left), Senior Business Manager – China Office, Royal Mail Group, and Jules Matteoni (right), Operations Director, Glasgow Prestwick Airport. (Photo: Glasgow Prestwick Airport)

"We are a full in-house operation, from ground handling and warehouse handling, to fire services, and air traffic control, which allows us to offer greater flexibility. Carriers only need to make one call to our operations line, and we take care of everything. This streamlined process is a significant advantage.” 

Jules Matteoni, Operations Director, Glasgow Prestwick Airport adds: “This joint solution with Royal Mail allows us to provide full visibility with traceability from touchdown to customer delivery and the potential to save on lead times through simplified processes. This is great news for our cargo customers, the airport, and the region.” 

“We are excited to be working with Glasgow Prestwick Airport to offer a cost-effective and efficient international e-commerce solution," says Vivian Davies, Director, Global Imports, Royal Mail. "Prestwick has no flight restrictions, congestion or curfews on both inbound and outbound flights, offering round-the-clock availability, which is key for the fast turnaround needed in the e-commerce sector. By partnering with Prestwick, we are confident we can offer our existing and new international e-commerce customers an unbeatable service on both delivery time and cost.”

We won't see Royal Mail's Titan Aiways Boeing (pictured here at Exeter) at Prestwick as they stopped using it in 2013.

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Postal Museum Post and Go News for Stampex

The always reliable and entertaining Commonwealth Stamps Opinion blog reports that Post and Go machine at The Postal Museum in London will be dispensing the Mail by Air stamps with a special additional inscription 'Airmail 1919'.

 
(Postal Museum mock-up which shows a 2016 datastring!)

The 'overprint' marks the centenary of several Airmail “firsts” in 1919 – the RAF flights to Cologne, the first flight across the Atlantic, the first flight to Paris and the pioneer flight to Australia.  The new stamps will be available from 11 September, ie the first day of Autumn Stampex.  Limited to 300 the pack costs £18 for 6 x 1st class stamps (face £4.20); the FDC is only £11.

As the author writes:  Now that Royal Mail Post and Go issues are much less frequent than in recent years I find this to be an appealing issue and of interest due to the postal history anniversaries commemorated by it.

Update 16 September:
As with earlier museum reissues, this one has brought a new set of stamps in more ways than one.  MC writes:

My TPM official FDC & Pack have stamps with the '17' code whilst my output from the kiosk during a transaction timed at 10.53 is '19' year coded. So the changeover must have occurred much earlier in the morning, or even before that. I had to wait at least 20 minutes to access the kiosk as the chap on it when I arrived (a suspected foreign dealer?) was ordering loads and holding up the 4 of us waiting, who all turned out to have very limited needs! So, whilst I was there, there were no roll changes.

I suspect the stamps in the FDC and pack were printed some time ago, in order for the FDCs to be processed and made available on the day of issue.  As we know, the date and time on the machines can be set to any required date, so 'fixing' it to show the date of issue is simple.  (But see below.)

Thanks to CFN for this picture of the R19YAL reprint with the actual font and datastring:

 

.. and for this earlier R17YAL version.  

UPDATE 17 September: Most importantly, BR points out that stamps carrying the  R19YAL were digitally printed, as you can see by comparing the two side-by-side.  Comparing the images above doesn't work, because they were scanned at different times, but I think they show differences as the earlier digital printings did.



Further update: Stuart Leigh (Post and Go Checklist author) clarifies that "Early on the first day at the Postal Museum R17YAL were being dispensed from the kiosk."


 
As usual this is posted for information only, we shall not be stocking these stamps.

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Stampex Stamp issues announced: Mail by Air, Ladybird Books.

We are now able to show the two stamp sets which will be issued during Autumn Stampex which this year runs from Wednesday 13 - Saturday 16 September at London's Business Design Centre in Upper Street Islington.  Both issues are now shown in detail on our website.

The latest Post and Go set is Mail by Air, which consists of the familiar set of 6 designs depicting key stages in the carriage of mail by air, from the first UK Aerial Post from Hendon to Windsor in 1911, through to the use of aircraft in the Datapost livery in the 1980s.

I particularly like the Imperial Airways HP42 flying over the pyramids of Egypt and the Short flying boat. 

The stamps will be issued on 13 September and the write-up for them is on this webpage.

UPDATE 13 September: My thanks to those who have written about the year coding on these which DP didn't notice and neither did I, on the stamps pictured below!  The year code is no longer M17L but R17YAL.

UPDATE 11 September: DP reports that the new stamps were installed in Richmond, Surrey last week - but when he went back for more they had been replaced.

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The second set will be issued on 14 September and depicts Ladybird Books.  I don't know why: there is no apparent anniversary and Royal Mail have not really justified it.  (Read more on our webpage here.)  The good news for users and collectors is that there are two 2nd class stamps in this set, just over a year after the last 2nd class special issues for Landscape Gardens.  The good news for those on a tight budget is that there is no prestige stamp book, which there often is with the Stampex issue.

All the stamps are in the same style: here is the 2nd class pair:

Whilst I do like many of the modern thematic issues - which usually offer opportunities to create maximum cards however difficult that might be in some cases - I do wish more stamps were issued with at least a passing acknowledgement of a specific anniversary or occasion.

Postcrossers will bemoan the absence of a postcard stamp but if they use really small writing they will be able to get these two stamps and a 5p stamp to make up the postcard rate of £1.17!

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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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