Smilers to follow Business Customised Sheets into history?

Following the cessation of the Business Customised Service, this announcement is currently showing on Royal Mail's Smilers Stamps page:

Important Notice: Thank you for your interest in Smilers®. Please note that the Smilers® service is going to be put on hold for an indefinite period after 5pm (GMT) on Thursday, 26th July. Customers will not be able to order personalised Smilers® sheets after this time either via the Royal Mail website or by post. All orders received before then will be fulfilled as normal.

A reader has forwarded a separate correspondence about this which coincides with the launch of Royal Mail's new online shop:

I wanted to let you know that the personalised Smilers ® service is going to be put on hold for an indefinite period after Thursday 26th July as Royal Mail launches its new online shop. Customers will not be able to order personalised Smilers ® sheets when the new web platform goes live until further notice.

In preparation of the migration to the new website, we reviewed the range of products and services we offer on the current website and took the decision not to migrate the personalised Smilers ® service to the new shop when it goes live and to suspend it for the foreseeable future. Whether or not the service will be reintroduced at a later date is still to be decided.

I should add that we will continue to offer Generic Sheets, Exhibition Sheets and Commemorative Sheets.

Given the increasing cost and, more importantly, lack of publicity surrounding the personalisation service in recent years, I suspect the public - who don't send that many stamped social letters anyway - have forgotten about this service, and that most recent productions have come from philatelic societies and so on.  The failure to make each year's Christmas stamps available will have hastened this, because that is one area where there could have been sales. (See also this blogpost from two years ago.)

However, what demonstrates clearly that Royal Mail - at the same time as marketing special stamp-related products outside the hobby - are continuing to target stamp collectors with unnecessary sheets is the continuation of the Generic Sheet.  Remember, these were originally produced in response to collector and trade complaints that personalisation was an expensive way for collectors to buy stamps which were not available from any other source.

Given that Royal Mail have produced Generic Sheets which include stamps not available for the personalisation service, I regard these as just the same as Business Customised Sheets - posters which happen to contain stamps and a quite unnecessary addition to the programme.  The sooner these cease the better, as far as I am concerned, though I don't see that happening anytime soon.

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New Wales 1st class definitive, but only on Smilers.

Graham Howard reports on Smilers News that the latest personalised Smilers Sheet which has

appeared on the market includes a change to the perforations which some people will regard as producing a new collectable stamp.

Currently Royal Mail have no Generic Smilers sheets on sale with country definitives, but if they return to this sales line (although what subject can they tempt collectors with?), they may* well be the new type.  Almost certainly printed, as usual, by the Cartor wing of ISP the new perforations are 'square-edged'.  As you can see from the image, this also has elliptical perforations.

* No guarantee, of course.  Royal Mail, like Post Office, are not renowned for following the normal stock rotation principles of 'first in, first out'.

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Stampex Faststamps - and Smilers Sheet

Thanks to our readers we can show you the Faststamps output from Spring Stampex even better than if we were there ourselves!  Thanks to Chris, Brian, and John for these pictures. 

We don't have these yet, and most of our stock was pre-ordered by regular customers.  If we have stock for sale a link will be provided in the blog.

Second Class Machin

a. with receipt

b. From machine A2

c. From machine A3, with the pair from the Bureau Pack for comparison.  The second line of text is indented on the Bureau pack.  It still isn't centred below the first line, so it's unclear what the actual format is intended to be, if indeed there IS a 'right' way.  And the year code is MA12 in the line leading up to the Queen's forehead.

Coronation overprint, with receipt, and then 1st class from machines A3 and A4.

Receipt showing purchase of Faststamps and Stampex Smilers Sheet.

John writes: "All three kiosks offer the option for a special Stampex Smiler sheet. - Pay via kiosk then see staff member who takes your photo for addition to sheet using i-Pad which then downloads to colour printer. The process takes about a minute." This is probably using the Smilers App developed by IntelligentAR referred to in an earlier post.

We've also been sent a picture of part of the Sheet, which shows that the captured image is only applied to 9 labels, with the 10th having the Stampex logo.

(And no, there is no prize for identifying the 'first-in-the-queue' customer pictured!)

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Latest Royal Mail iPhone app allows for Gold Medal Smilers stamps

Just when we thought that the Gold Medal stamps were all done and dusted, a reader points out that the latest update of the Smilers iPhone app is offering users the option of putting a photo into a "future gold medal winner" template, which allows them to type in names and sport, etc by way of personalisation. 

Although these are not stamps as such, you've got to admire Royal Mail's inegnuity for tapping into 2012's Gold Medal mania and allowing Smilers customers the opportunity to create something different.

(UPDATE 8 Feb: now or shortly also available on Android platforms.  And despite the lack of any publicity from Royal Mail to my knowledge, these are selling well!)


Our reader supplied us with images from the App (click to see larger):

1. select type of label

2. Note only the Union Flag stamp is available with this label

3. Add caption

4. Order multiples of 10 or 20 stamps

The iPhone App is free and certainly installs on older iPhones, but so far I have not been "unable to connect to the Smilers server".  Those with the newer technology may find it easier.  (Edit - Royal Mail have now confirmed that this App requires iOS 4.2; my logic says that it shouldn't have been possible to install it, but what do I know about technology!)

UPDATE 6 February:  Thanks to a reader we can report that

There are two Smilers apps listed in the App Store. You need to make sure you are using the new one - called "Royal Mail Smilers" which is produced by Intelligent AR Ltd, rather than the old one simply called "Smilers" which is produced by Royal Mail Group Ltd.

And having checked that out, I now know that....

This new one updated on 21 January 2013 (v 1.6) is NOT compatible with iOS 4.2.1.

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Celebrate Douglas Myall’s 90th Birthday

Douglas Myall, well-known to Machin collectors for his Complete Deegam Machin Handbook and numerous other contributions to the field, will reach his 90th birthday on December 17. 
The Machin Study Group of the West Toronto (Canada) Stamp Club is going to honor Myall by preparing a personalized postage stamp picturing Myall and a cacheted cover postmarked on December 17 with the Royal Philatelic Society of Canada’s “125 years of Canadian Philately” cancel.
Covers are available from the Study Group at $2 each (Canadian dollars) and single picture postage stamps at $1 each, plus appropriate postage. The covers can be addressed and mailed directly to you (with additional postage as necessary to addresses outside Canada), or unaddressed and sent in a separate cover.
A very limited supply of stamps and covers will be available, so if you are interested, please reserve them soon.
To reserve them, contact Vijay Vijayakumar at machincollector@gmail.com or Garfield Portch at garfield.portch@gmail.com. Be sure to indicate your country of residence so they can give you the proper postage costs.

UPDATE 7 November
Vijay has provided additional information and some images:

Payment can now be made through Paypal. Please use garfield.portch@gmail.com and in the message column mention "90th Birthday cachet"

Cachet $2.00

single stamp $1.00

strip or block of four stamps $4.00

Keepsake $10.00

Don't forget to email first to be told what shipping cost to include in the total.

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London 2012 Olympic Gold Medal stamps- as it happens

I wonder how many websites and blogs will be created to list all the Team GB Olympic medal winners, and how many of these will list all the gold medal winners with pictures of the stamps generated by Royal Mail?  (See our original report and the design of the Gold Medal stamps here.)

This blog doesn't lend itself to doing that.  If I constantly update a blog entry it will slip off the first page viewed as other philatelic news breaks.  As we get the pictures - and at the moment I don't know whether Royal Mail will send them to us by email every day - I'll update the page on our website, but it may not be possible to keep this up-to-the-minute.  For one thing the Norfolk and Norwich Philatelic Society Summer Stamp and Postcard Fair will be keep me busy all day on 4th August!

On the Smilers Stamps website, Graham Howard has set up a new page which "we hope to feature details of all these new stamps and sheets in a new page Gold Medal Winners", so I won't duplicate that in this blog.  There is also a link to Graham's page at the foot of this page ('links')

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Christmas 2011 Personalised Smilers - update

I mentioned earlier the confusion about what was available this year and where to get them from. 

The confusion was not aided by Royal Mail's website being down for maintenance last weekend with problems affecting various modules all week.

Graham Howard, on his Smilers-info website has probably now cracked it, though we would still be interested in the experience of other Smiler-seekers.

In brief, Snapfish are producing Smilers sheets, known there as Photostamps, for the 2nd & 1st class values only.  No personalised Smilers sheets are available through Royal Mail's website, but all four values (including the 68p & £1.10 airmail stamps) can be obtained from Royal Mail Tallents House, by phone, e-mail or written application form (which ought to be available at POs though I haven't yet seen any.

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Christmas 2011 Personalised Smilers - how and which?

Christmas is supposed to be one of the most popular times for people to get personalised stamps - Smilers.  Sometimes they use the Christmas stamps, sometimes they use one of the many greetings stamp alternatives.  But this year they could have a problem (especially today as Royal Mail's website is totally unavailable!).


As we know, Royal Mail philatelic have produced the usual Generic Smilers Sheet containing 2nd & 1st class stamps and the two airmail rates 68p & £1.10.  The Christmas catalogue shows the inland stamps personalised in sheets of 10 & 20.  The philatelic listing also mentions these but not the airmail stamps.


Go to www.royalmail.com/smilers as usual and there is no sign of the 2011 Christmas stamps at all!  So what's happening?  Have we actually got a pair of philatelic stamps (the 68p & £1.10) that are in a generic sheet but which are NOT available for personalisation?  


Has anybody ordered - better still received - any Smilers stamps this Christmas?  How did you get them??

Update:  

As I expected, Graham Howard at www.smilers-info.com is on top of this (click on 'News').  Royal Mail won't answer any questions about the Snapfish part of the operation, even a simple one like "why only 1st & 2nd class?".  I would have expected the principal to this contract (rather than the sub-contractor) to say, "yes the airmail values should be available and we will contact Snapfish and make sure it is so."  

And, says Graham, the ordering process at Snapfish is not entirely without its problems. 


Update 2:

This morning's post brought proof that this year's Smilers so exist!

London 2010 Festival of stamps - Smilers photobooths

Visitors are probably aware that Royal Mail will have two Smilers photobooths at the show (like the 1 they have at Stampex).

You should be warned that there is no facility to use digital images on flashdrives etc.  The system is set up only to take images from the camera - although it is possible that a photograph could be placed before the camera and used for personalisation of these sheets.

Having taken my flashdrive, I shall now print the images, and on Wednesday test whether fixing them to the wall behind where my head would be will be sufficient!   Somehow I doubt that they would allow the production of (effectively) "blank" labels by focussing just on the white wall of the booth.  :-(

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