Where to find the unusual

We don't normally advertise offerings from specific other dealers, but some readers, especially those outside the UK, may be interested in buying some of the odd-ball items that we have mentioned in the recent and more distant past.

Many UK readers will be aware of the varied offerings from Rushstamps, and the sales list prepared for the London 2020 exhibition is full of them!  You can download it here.

Going right back to the 2012 Olympics, readers may well remember this non-stamp, of which examples are known postally used:

These are offered as singles, miniature sheets of 6, and full sheets of 24, and a few used examples.

Even further back, something I wasn't aware of at the time, a strip of three imperforate 97p stamps from the Gerry Anderson set.

Tucked away on a page of Machin phosphor omitted errors, and imperf pairs, they also have this gem (central stamp):

This is the 2017 Accession commemoration self-adhesive forgery.

I'm sure you will find it interesting; for ordinary sets and definitives however, we can match the prices if we have the item in our stock, and more will be added by the time our shop reopens.

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London 2012 Olympic/Paralympic Sheets Offer - one only

Remember 2009?  The first set of 10 of Royal Mail's London Olympics stamps was issued, heralding another 10 each year, with many more to come when stamps were produced for each British gold-medal-winning participant.

As well as the 10 stamps, each year Royal Mail produced one of their premium priced commemorative sheets.  These were sold at over 3 x face value and although they are not priced in Stanley Gibbons catalogue the retail price is now £20-£25 each.

We have just added one set of these to our webshop at £56.

Also available is the 30-stamp composite sheet issued in 2011.  This was sold without premium and sold quickly at the time, with the price rising accordingly.  This sheet is catalogued, as SG 3204a and priced at £50.   We have this sheet available at £35.

Buy all four sheets and get £5 off, using the discount code LOND2012 at checkout.  Only one of each available.

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Post and Go update - 2nd class reprinted again, and Olympic Games Flag update.

In May this year I had reports that a reprint of the 2nd class Post and Go stamps had appeared with a 2015 year code (reported as MA15).  I didn't have a picture and overlooked reporting it on the blog with so much else going on at the time.

But already a further reprint has appeared in Norwich's SSKs.  These have the new 2nd CLASS in the security printing, and the 2016 year code CL16S rather than MA16 - well done to the finder for spotting that change!   And well done to Royal Mail Production for keeping us on our toes.  Here's an example of a blank label, click on it to see the coding which is left of centre, 4 large rows down.

And here is the MA15 printing which I omitted to show in May with the previous security printing:

A reminder that the Union Flag stamp should be in and Royal Mail enquiry offices from 1 August and in Post Office branches from 10 August (not 3rd as originally intended or 11th as amended) to coincide with the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.   But don't be surprised if they are still not there on the new date, as nobody in PO Ltd seem to know anything.  See an update to the original report here.

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Post and Go Stamp News: Olympics and another Navy Museum

Press release 22 July 2016

Royal Mail is pleased to announce that Post and Go machine A007 will go live at the Royal Navy Museum of Naval Firepower in Gosport, Hampshire on 16 August. The machine will vend Union Flag and Machin stamp designs and carry the 'Royal Navy' identifier.

According to the RNMNF website, the Museum Shop is located "opposite our Reception area and stocks a wide range of Souvenirs and Books relative to the Priddy's Hard site and Naval Firepower.

"Publications and souvenirs can be obtained from the Shop via Mail Order, please contact the Gift shop manager by phone on 02392 505612 or Contact Retail & Coffee Shop to discuss availability and current prices.

"The Camber Lights waterside coffee shop, is FREE to enter and can be used independently from the Museum."

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To mark the Olympic Games in Rio, Royal Mail Enquiry Office machines and Post Office Limited

machines will carry the Union Flag stamps from 1 August until 13 September.

UPDATE 28 July
Royal Mail have said that the flags should be nationwide by 10 August. 

UPDATE 5 August
Several people have reported that there is no sign of the Flag stamp at any Post Office branches yet, although with Royal Mail announcing that they 'should' be nationwide by 10 August, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that some might have arrived already - or at least that the parties involved would know they were coming.  This tale from S is at the extreme end of customer experiences, but maybe that is his persistence in trying to find them.

Had a very frustrating morning today.  Started with a phone call to Stockport Post Office to make sure they had the Union Flags in their P+G machines, no was the reply.  

So then I tried the Stoke on Trent PO; no was their response the next ones are the Ladybirds, nothing till then.   I mentioned the Royal Mail(RM) Post and Go website and they suggested I phone the PO help line, that’s where they get all their info from.  

Phoned the PO help line they said did not know anything so I should contact the RM help line.  Phoned the RM help line, knew nothing, everything comes from the Philatelic Bureau – Tallents House (TH).  

Phoned TH and after about 15 minutes wait they answered, I think it was a Polish man who answered, he knew nothing and was very rude, so I asked for a Manager, none available, eventually he took my phone number and promised to get a manager to phone back.  

Later, he phoned back stating “The machines are in Rio and stamps only available from Rio”.  I explained that was not true and demanded to speak to someone else.  

A man called Jim came on the line and I went through the story again, he did not know but promised to find out and come back which he did about 15 minutes later – there is a delay in printing the rolls of stock and would not be issued until Wednesday 10th August.

Given that the decision to have these flag stamps available was made by Royal Mail, why should collectors be the only ones that know about them?  Surely they told Post Office Ltd what they were planning?  If they didn't, why not?  If they did, why didn't POL tell the branches that would be affected?

Why does the Royal Mail helpline not know about the philatelic programme and about these special arrangements?  

Knowing that collectors are sometimes confused by rumour and by forgetting exactly what they have read in magazines and blogs - and would therefore eventually phone somebody at Royal Mail - why not tell the Royal Mail helpline call centre?  Especially given the problems at Tallents House - the last thing they need is more confused collectors telephoning about something that will be mainly in Post Office branches, and which won't be handled by the philatelic service.

For a company specialising in communication there are woeful holes in Royal Mail's own ability to communicate to its own staff and its partner organisations.

Since writing this, ie in the last half-hour, I have found an update on the Royal Mail Post and Go page which now says that the stamps will be in their Enquiry Offices from 1 August (ie already), and in PO branches from 10th.

UPDATE 10 August
Doug reports that the Flags were loaded into machines at Eastcheap (London) after he asked for them!   (See below).  Meanwhile we've realised that as Norwich Castle Mall Crown Office is relocating to WHSmiths, today will be the first and last day for the 190003 branch to have the flags back. 

 

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Reported on the GBStamp.co.uk blog, there is also news from the Postal Museum on new Post and Go to coincide with Autumn Stampex:

Coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the Edward VIII 1d value issue and the first day of Autumn Stampex, a new overprint will be available from the Post and Go+ machine in The Postal Museum foyer and will feature on both 1st and 2nd class Machin reels. In addition to The Postal Museum logo, the overprint will feature a graphic illustration of the royal cipher for Edward VIII, as designed by him and used on royal household mail, as well as the text "King Edward VIII 1936".

The stamps will be available from The Postal Museum foyer during standard opening hours from Wednesday 14 September until close on Friday 11 November, replacing the normal Machins. The Union Flag and Mail Coach designs will continue to be offered with the present overprint and will not change.

UPDATE 2 August
An image of these has now appeared on the Twitter feed of Blake Envelopes who have presumably produced a cover for The Postal Museum. (See right)

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You thought it was all over, but it isn't - Another 2012 Gold Medal Surprise !

Since Great Britain hotsed the 2012 Olympics and overnight produced stamps for each British Gold Medal Winner, there have been a number of surprising 'errors' and possible misprints, reported here.

As regular readers will remember, the stamps were issued in miniature sheets of 6, printed on an A4 sheet of 4x MS, (and these were printed in press sheets of 4x A4).

So this came as a bit of a surprise today:

(To show the perforations as they did not show well)

On eBay from seller 4chonts this is a roll of 1000 miniature sheets, each of 6 stamps, which are listed at £3,200 or 53p each compared with the 60p original price and current 63p value.

The stamp shown was the 10th in the series and one of the 6 issued on 5 August 2012.

I suspect this is a roll that would have been printed for machine application to Royal Mail first day covers. Such coils are common, for self-adhesive definitives (which are printed in one multi-value coil, with sideways printing rather than N-S), and commemoratives including post and go issues.

Royal Mail do not publicise this sort of printing and the stamps are not available to collectors or dealers (with one exception) but the system is well known.

However, there was never any evidence that the Gold Medal stamps were produced in this way as well as by the 6 regional printers contracted to achieve rush-digitally-printed overnight delivery to Post Offices for sale the next day.

So many questions !

Was this done for each medal, and for the paralympics?

Were these coils supplied to Handstamp Centres, which normally carry small stocks of stamps in order to replace damaged or wrongly cancelled FDCs/cards?

How many printers were involved? Was it any of the 6, or a different printer entirely?

Where has this one been for the last three years?

Are there any other gold medal coils ? !

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Paralympics Gold Medal Stamps sold out before end-of-sale date?

We understand that some of the Paralympic Gold Medal stamps were sold out before they were taken off sale at the end of December.

As reported, the arrangement between Royal Mail and the International Olympic Committee ran from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2012, and there was a flurry of orders to Tallents House before the cut-off date, which of course coincided with the Christmas/New Year holiday.

It's reported that some orders could not be fulfilled due to stocks of one or more sheets of Paralympic Gold Medal Stamps (containing stamps for 4 different medal winners) being already exhausted.

This suggests that the Paralympic stamps may be more scarce than the Olympic.  We know someone who has access to competition mailings who has completed many sets of Olympic GM stamps on cover, but is struggling to find a single complete set of Paralympic GM stamps.

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Gold streaks on Olympic Gold Medal stamp sheet

A friend showed me this recently so I scanned it for display here.

(click on the image for a much bigger one)

If these were printed in photogravure we might suggest that these marks are a doctor-blade flaw, but this are litho, and there are several marks.  It looks to me similar to the drag marks that I get on my desk-top printer when there has been a problem with printing.

I understand that the original finder has several like this and the extend over the whole A4 sheet.  The colour affected is the gold, so it is from the original Walsall printing and is under the Olympic images.

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Olympic Gold Medal Stamps - production numbers

Royal Mail no longer publicises the number of stamps printed or sold, which is a pity, because those details would help us to understand the relative scarcity of some modern stamps. 

For the Olympic Gold Medal winners stamps, six regional printers added the medalists' images to the base sheets.  It is probable that different quantities were printed by each printer, with the greatest number being printed in Swindon for the national Post Office Supplies Depot to distribute to branches nationwide, while the 518 'next-day' branches received their supplies from the regional printers.

We now know that the Attleborough printer, serving the eastern region from mid-Lincolnshire, south to the London Area, west into the east Midlands, and the whole of East Anglia produced 126,720 of each of the Olympic stamps, being 1,320 press sheets for each medalist. The press sheets contained 4 A4 sheets each containing 4 miniature sheets of 6 stamps.

Because of the overnight and standby working - printers were working late every night to take account of medals won up to 10pm - the cost to Royal Mail for the 'next day' offices was higher than for regular stamp issues.

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Olympic definitives now available as Smilers - only on Smartphones so far?

We mentioned as the Olympics started that there was a Smilers booth on site, but bemoaned the fact that these stamps - as shown on the Olympic Venues Generic Sheet - were not available to collectors or the general public outside the Games Venue at Stratford.

Now, Graham Howard reports on Smilers-Info News (as a result of the eagle-eyes of one of his readers) that these stamps are now available to anybody, via the latest version of Royal Mail's Smartphone app which allows you to upload into a Personalised Smilers Sheet any photo taken on the phone or already stored there from other sources.

Graham has sought clarification from Royal Mail about whether the new additions to the Smilers Personalised range will be made available through conventional Smilers purchase routes, enabling many more people to buy them.  Watch this space, or Smilers-Info News on the link above.

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Memories of London 2012 stamp issue

The Memories of London 2012 Miniature Sheet will contain four stamps, and be issued on the 27th September.

It honours the volunteer Games Makers who did so much to make the games run smoothly, and also features the Paralympic GB procession.

£1.28 Paralympic Games Opening ceremony	1st Class Paralympic Games   Paralympics GB procession
1st Class Olympic Games  Games makers	£1.28  Olympic Games  Closing ceremony and handover to Rio

New! Click on the image for a larger version; larger images of individual stamps are shown at the end of this entry.

This will be the final issue relating to the London 2012 games - until the anniversaries!

Update 28 September: Some special handstamps for this sheet are shown on our webpage.

Update: RM Tallents house will have the following commemorative cover available from the 27th September.  It bears the closing ceremony/handover £1.28 stamp from the miniature sheet above, and will be cancelled with the special postmark shown.

Update: delivery of the cover has been delayed possibly until November - see here.

Update: For those interested in special printings, consider the likelihood of Royal Mail staff tearing maybe 100,000 stamps of these stamps from the miniature sheets?  I think the £1.28 stamp for these covers will come from a special printing of just this stamp.

Stamp images:

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Royal Mail announce Paralympic discount to customers who subscribed to Olympic Gold Sheets & FDCs.

Some of Royal Mail's customers have kindly sent us a copy of the special offer on Paralympic stamps that has been made to subscribers to the Olympic Gold Medal collection.

Although this offer cannot be extended to people who bought piecemeal at Post Office branches, I hope it will be seen as evidence that Royal Mail are not exploiting collectors as so many people have written, and recognise the cost of this summer's stamps to collectors.

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Royal Mail are now taking orders for Paralympic Gold Medal Stamps and FDCs

Paralympic Gold Medal Stamps and FDCs can now be ordered from Royal Mail's website  here http://tiny.cc/rm_para_gmws (but see below!)

If you ordered the Olympic Gold Medal subscription and have not received a letter from Royal Mail Edinburgh do not order Paralympic Gold Medal stamps yet as there will be a special deal for previous subscribers.   See this post.

The main discussion on these stamps and all news will be on the original post.

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Startling misprint on Olympic Gold Medal stamp sheet

The production of Olympic Gold Medal stamps seems to have gone smoothly apart from the problems at Preston which prevented them from printing the last three stamps.  There are minor variations in colour/shade and some stamps look grainier than others, but overall things seem to have gone to plan for Royal Mail and the army of printers and couriers.

So this sheet is something of a surprise.  Bought at a Post Office branch, it shows an upward shift of the digital overprint by approximately 6mm.

This results in the athlete image overlaying the perforations, and the caption being printed over the preprinted gold text.

Only one miniature sheet has so far been reported.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't last long.  Our anonymous contributor in the comment below has forwarded an image of a complete A4 sheet, with an even greater shift - about 9.5mm.  And being a complete sheet, it shows that the printer was in Preston.  Here's the lower left corner:  And from this even more than the other, it is evident that the Team GB logo is printed at the same time as the athlete image, by the digital printer.

UPDATE:

We understand that the regional printers were selected after several trials and tests, over a 6-month period.  The test sheets (call them proofs if you like but they weren't actually proofs of the finished GM stamps) were examined by Royal Mail before the six printers were actually selected.

To be approved, the proofs had to meet the exacting specifications laid down by Royal Mail (curves, densities, dot-gain etc etc.), although the results were not necessarily what the printer would have normally accepted.  (As you will see when my comparison scans are shown, the results vary considerably so I'm not certain that all 6 printers kept to the same 'exacting specifications'.)

The Taekwondo medal was won around 10.35pm, the artwork reached the printers at around 11:45pm, the plates were on press about 1am, with guillotining around 3am.  If these misprinted sheets were the result of the set-up (or make-ready) process, and were put into the pile of 'good' sheets in error, then that is when it happened.

The Postmaster at Flint confirmed that he started selling the stamps at midday on the day of release, and within a couple of minutes had received a call from royal mail advising him to stop selling the stamps until he had checked them all.  Apparently he had ‘several’ in his safe to return to Royal Mail.

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Gold medal stamps Solihull and Preston printings.

We've received an announcement from Royal Mail about the Gold Medal stamps distributed to Post Offices in northern England.

"... our planning produced dividends on Saturday afternoon when our North of England printer encountered some difficulties with its printing plates. As these difficulties couldn’t be rectified over the weekend Royal Mail implemented one of its contingencies and moved production of issues GMW27 Mo Farah, GMW28 Luke Campbell and GMW29 Anthony Joshua for the North East and North West of England to our Midlands Printer.

"The last Minisheet printed by our North of England (Preston) printer was therefore GMW26 Ed McKeever."

As contributors have reported, Post Offices in the north received supplies of the last three gold medal stamps from the Midland (Solihull) printer.

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Blog posts, Comments and Replies

We've had a lot of new readers during the Olympic Games, and I suspect some are people who don't normally collect stamps.  Welcome to you all - and I hope you this has (re-)awakened your interest in the hobby *.

Some people seem to be unsure about the workings of a blog.  This is how it works.

- We write the words and add the pictures and tags

- You may comment. You can use 'Anonymous', your own name, or a pseudonym.

- All comments are moderated; that is, we reserve the right not to publish.  Nearly everything is published - and we are grateful for all the extra information you put in the comments for the benefit of all our readers.  Some comments left are spam, or unintelligible, and these are deleted.

- We reply to comments where it is important to do so, but we cannot reply direct to the writer unless your email address is in your profile.

So if you have asked a question, we have probably answered it where you first asked.  Asking it again somewhere else, in a relevant (and therefore published)comment on another post won't always get a repeat of the same answer.  If you are waiting for an answer, please look at other comments you have made and see the answers there.

* If it has, take a look at our website, or better still, at our shop to see what else has been issued.

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Royal Mail's gold medal stamp compendium - a review.

As well as publicising the Gold Medal Stamps widely in the media, Royal Mail also advertised an 'Official 2012 Compendium' to house the miniature sheets.  

"With a foreword by five-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Steve Redgrave, the richly illustrated, informative and Official 2012 Compendium is tailor-made to keep every single Gold Medal Winners Miniature Sheet safe for posterity and makes a superb companion to the Games."

Post Office customers in many areas received an envelope to keep their miniature sheets clean until they got them home.  These advertised the compendium:

Sadly while medals were still being won, Royal Mail sold out of these on their website as the production run was apparently limited to 10,000.  However, people who wanted one may be interested in this review received today:

"I just recieved my compendium through the post and have to say it is not as I expected it to be.

As described there are 14 printed inserts depicting leading medal contenders, which are inserted into the 14 see through sleeves which are described as - 'to keep your gold medal stamps in pristine condition.'  To store the 29 gold stamp minisheets will require 15 doubled up so 1 will have to be loose as will all the contenders inserts.

I would value your opinion and that of others reading you blog and I am aware that Royal Mail see your blog so am hoping they will realise the issues in this rather expensive album.

If people order the full set of mini sheets from Royal Mail are you aware if these will come supplied in sleeves or anything to slip into this album?"

Not impressed then!

I didn't order any as I thought it was an expensive addition to the probably large bill for the stamps themselves, so I don't know whether this is hardback - I'm told that it IS hardback.(unlikely) - perhaps somebody else can comment.  And although RM were selling collections of 19 with the 20th free if you ordered by a certain date, the album only has room for 14. 

As for how the mini-sheets are sent from Edinburgh, I expect they will be in the usual black carrier unless you ordered multiples of 4 in which case you will probably get the complete A4 sheet between boards in a large padded envelope.

UPDATE 25 August:  Royal Mail's website now has a FAQ about the Olympic and Paralympic Gold Medal Winners Stamps. This includes a comment on the Compendium, and also announces an Album to hold all the Gold Medal Stamps.  Whether this will be for single stamps or miniature sheets is not stated.

Q: Will there be an album produced to house the stamps?

A: Yes, there will be an album designed specifically for both Olympic and Paralympic Gold Medal Winner stamps and we will have this available in approximately four weeks.

Q: I have bought the Olympic Gold Medal stamps compendium. It has only 14 sleeves so how do I contain the GM stamps?

A: Customers can insert two Gold Medal miniature sheets in each sleeve, facing out. The sleeves are designed to contain up to five miniature sheets, and hence the 29th mini sheet could be inserted within a sleeve also.

UPDATED 29 August (see comments) - New Olympics album available at RM's website.

Did you order the compendium?  What do you think of it - leave a comment, or email me.

UPDATE 10 JULY 2013
We know of an alternative album for anybody who has still to house their Gold Medal stamps - visit Dauwalder's of Salisbury at this link.  We have not seen their albums so cannot make a recommendation but we do know that they are a reputable company and their products are widely used.

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Boxing provides Britain's 29th gold medal stamp

Anthony Joshua made it three boxing golds for Britain at London 2012 with a dramatic win over Roberto Cammarelle in Sunday's super-heavyweight final.  This is Great Britain's 29th gold medal and Royal Mail's 29th gold medal stamp.

A second Gold Medal Stamp for Mo Farah, and also number 28.

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Mo Farah seals second Olympic gold with 5,000m win, taking his second gold medal of the London 2012 Olympics with a thrilling sprint finish in the 5,000m.  Farah is only the seventh man in history to complete a 10,000m and 5,000m Olympic double at the same Games. 

Luke Campbell won GB's second boxing gold of London 2012.   Campbell, 24, beat Ireland's John Joe Nevin in the bantamweight final.

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Another gold medal stamp for tomorrow already assured!

A gold medal before most people have had breakfast - and we'll be showing that later.

Meanwhile, there's an interesting article about the production operation and the process for ensuring that the stamps reached Post Offices on the following day, even when the medal wasn't won until 10.30 pm in Print Week.

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Ed McKeever powered to victory in the men's 200m kayak to win Britain's 26th gold of the Olympics.The 28-year-old dominated the K1 single final, with Spaniard Saul Craviotto Rivero taking silver and Canada's Mark de Jonge bronze.

And one edit is followed immediately by another as Mo Farah wins the 5,000 metres!

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Two perforation variations on Gold Medal stamp sheet

My thanks to Andy D. who has taken the trouble to write to me (not being a whiz at computers) alerting me to two different rouletting patterns on the gold medal stamp base sheets.

The bases sheets are printed, die-cut and rouletted by Walsall Security Printers so this is down to them.  On the sheets that I've examined I've only found this on the side rouletting adjacent to the fourth miniature sheet, which is good news for people who have only bought that MS:

As you shown in the image, there are 4 extra long roulettes (or uninterrupted) on the left-hand sheet.  This is not restricted to GMW07 or to one printer location, and could be found on any sheet.  As the sheets are printed two-up on the web, this difference probably occurs on one side only.

I've not had a chance to examine the horizontal rouletting between the MSs and will be pleased to pass on any information that you have, preferably with images.  (And see the comments below for other people's findings.)

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