Visions of the Universe 11 February 2020 issue.

Advance information was provided last month, and we can now show the stamps in full.  Once again Royal Mail have included 2nd class stamps, which is to be commended, and these are very colourful.  I predict that these will receive more positive comment than the Romantic Poets, although they will have a niche attraction.

In the year in which the Royal Astronomical Society is celebrating its 200th anniversary Royal Mail is issuing a set of eight Special Stamps, depicting various astronomical features and phenomena discovered over that time by British astronomers and astrophysicists. The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) was founded in March 1820 and is the leading learned society for astronomy in the UK, promoting the scientific study of astronomy, the solar system and related geophysics. It supports public education for students, teachers, the public and media.

Stephen Hawking was awarded the RAS’s prestigious gold medal in 1985 for his contribution to cosmology and his collaborations on the nature of black holes. He is commemorated in a special Coin Cover that includes a coin specially struck by The Royal Mint.

 

Stamps
2nd Class - Cat’s Eye Nebula, discovered by William Herschel – first president of the Royal Astronomical Society.

2nd Class - Enceladus, Saturn’s Moon with water geysers (discovered by William Herschel, 1789; British team first detected water geysers

1st Class - Pulsar - The first Pulsar was discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Anthony Hewish, 1967.

1st Class - Black Hole – the image is from an interpretation of the data from black hole by University College London, (In 1970 Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose published a scientific paper which was ground-breaking in predicting the nature of Black Holes.)

£1.55 - Jupiter’s aurora - the University of Leicester is closely involved in the understanding of the auroras.

£1.55 - Gravitational Lensing - An optical phenomenon where huge gravitational fields bend light and was first detected by team that included UK astronomers in 1979.

£1.60 - Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko - British companies and universities including the Open University involved in the Philae probe and imaging, as the lander descended sending back huge amounts of data from the surface of the comet.

£1.60 - Cygnus A galaxy - First radio source discovered from beyond our own galaxy, Jodrell Bank identified the twin sources of radio waves from it.

Prestige Stamp Book
This 24-page book celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Royal Astronomical Society. Written by astronomy journalist Dr Stuart Clark, it explores the history of the Royal Astronomical Society from its inception 200 years ago to the present day, including key discoveries, the growth of astronomical science and geophysics and recent space missions. The book contains all eight special stamps in panes not available anywhere else plus two panes containing eight Definitive stamps.

 

 

Shown above, panes 1 and 3 show the panes containing the special stamps.

Pane 4 (left) shows the Royal Astronomical Society logo, surrounded by 4 x 2p, 2 x £1.35 and 2 x 1p Machin Definitive stamps. 

Pane 2 (right) shows an image of a Black Hole - or probably a solar eclipse as on the front cover - surrounded by 4 x 1st Class Country Definitive stamps, 2 x 10p and 2 x 5p Definitive stamps.

These Machins are coded M19L, which is a shame, and the country definitives are new font. This means that we have only three new stamps 1p, 10p & £1.35 -  as the 5p was in the Star Wars PSB, and the 2p was included in the Queen Victoria PSB last year.  However, the shades are different, as shown earlier.

Technical details and acknowledgements
The 50 x 30 mm stamps are designed by True North and are printed in litho by Internatioanl Security Printers, with PVA gum in sheets of 70 stamps.
Acknowledgements: Black hole reference imagery © Dr Ziri Younsi, UCL; gravitational lensing black hole reference imagery (Cheshire Cat galaxy group) © NASA/Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center/Science Photo Library.

Products

First Day Covers, Presentation Pack, PSB, Stamp cards, Framed set, Coin Cover.

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2020 Second Issue - Visions of the Universe 11 February

Royal Mail's Philatelic Bulletin just received, announces the second issue as being "Visions of the Universe", to be issued on 11 February.  This issue marks the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the Royal Astronomical Society.

2012 'Venus with clouds' 1st class

No pictures can be shown yet, but the issues consists - as did the first one - of two each 2nd and 1st class, and £1.55 and £1.60 stamps.  (UPDATE 17 JAN: They are now shown on cover producers' websites and on another blog.) This definitely represents a change in policy from Royal Mail who have previously said that they regarded the events/commemorations too important to be marked by 2nd class stamps: "it is very difficult to list people or places as second class."

As well as the 8 stamps there will be a first day cover, presentation pack, and stamp cards as usual, and a prestige stamp book (PSB).

The PSB contains two panes which have the eight commemorative stamps, and two definitive panes.  Only pane 4 will be supplied on a Royal Mail first day cover.  This contains 4 x 2p, 2 x £1.35 and 2 x 1p Definitive stamps, with a centre label featuring the Royal Astronomical Society logo.

The other definitive pane has the four 1st class country definitives, plus 2 x 10p and 2 x 5p Definitive stamps. The label in the centre features an illustration of a black hole.

So for Machin collectors it would seem that there are two sets of five new stamps - 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p and £1.35 which should be coded MPIL M20L.

Update 15 January - John confirms that these are coded M19L, which is a shame, and the country definitives are new font. This means that we have only three new stamps 1p, 10p & £1.35 -  as the 5p was in the Star Wars PSB, and the 2p was included in the Queen Victoria PSB last year.  However, I shall be very surprised if this is the same dark shade!

UPDATE 22 January.
I've removed the stock photos of the Machins to show the actuals.  The 2p is shown compared with that in the Queen Victoria PSB, and the 5p is shown compared with that in the Star Wars PSB.

 

 

The very dark Queen Victoria PSB, and Visions of the Universe.

 

 

 

 The Star Wars 5p, and the lighter head from Visions of the Universe, lower picture under UV.

 

 

It remains to be seen whether the Country Definitives will be any different from previous versions.  The publicity mock-ups, predictably, show the original font on each of them, so we really can't begin to guess what will actually appear.

The country definitives have the new font.  The Scotland stamp is almost identical to that in the sheet printing.  The Wales stamp is slightly less yellow.  I don't have an example of the Northern Ireland sheet stamp; if anybody can send a comparison scan when they get the stamps next month, I would appreciate it. 

The biggest difference I can see is in the shade of the England stamp, which is a markedly different shade, despite being printed by the same printer and process.

 

 

 

 

Other products, aimed outside the philatelic community, are coin covers and framed stamps.  More details and pictures here when we are permitted to show them, which is currently 31 January.

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Not only Great Britain stamps: some of my other philatelic interests.

If you only read my blogs, you won't know that I have other philatelic interests apart from modern Great Britain - security Machin definitives and Post and Go.  The journey of Tim Peake from Baikonur to the International Space Station (ISS) gives me the opportunity to introduce you to two other areas of collecting.

Tim Peake isn't the first British Astronaut, although he is the first to go to the ISS as part of the European Space Agency's venture with the Russian space programme.  The first was Helen Sharman who went to the Russian Mir space station in 1991.   The Sheffield Scouts Charity Christmas Post chose Helen as the subject of their Christmas stamps that year.

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You can read more about the Sheffield Scout Posts from 1991 here.

In the mid-1990s I took an interest in the modern postal history of the countries which 'appeared' from the collapse of the USSR.   This turbulent period included provisional stamps, high inflation, and a large number of totally bogus 'stamps' and covers, from 15 countries some of them totally new to the philatelic atlas.  This was totally by chance as I happened upon some interesting covers at one of the London Stampex events.

I started studying some areas in detail, and even learned a little Russian to help!  Sadly I still have a huge amount of material to study and write up, but the first fruits of my labours are here. This was in the days of dial-up modems and pay-per-minute internet access, so the images are necessarily small.  When I get back to it, there will be much more detail and much bigger images.

I don't have any stamps showing the ISS to which Tim Peake will blast off in just over an hour, but one of the earliest of Kazakhstan's stamps shows the Mir Space Station.

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Updates on new stamp arrivals etc

The 16 October Space Science stamps have the year microprinted at the top right outside the design:

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The Christmas stamps have the year reversed out of the phosphor bands, as usual.  On the 2nd class stamp the date is at top centre, on all others it is at top right.  The miniature sheet follows the same pattern except that the date is at the foot of the two Large Letter stamps.

We've added pictures of the Miniature sheet and Generic Smilers Sheet to the blogpost linked in the previous paragraph.

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We have the Poppy Stamp and have added pictures and details to the original thread.
My apologies to readers and commenters - the original thread has been irretrievably deleted in error.  There doesn't seem to be any way to recover it.  A picture of the whole sheet has now been added as a new post.
 

As yet no special postmarks have been announced for 23 October.

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Paralympic Gold Medal Winners 

Our webpage has now been updated to show all these stamps as they were issued, with details of when the medals were won.  That should make it easier for readers than working through the various blogposts.

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Space Science stamps still due on 16 October - Royal Mail.

We had an enquiry from a customer yesterday regarding the Space Science stamps.  Apparently somebody at Tallents House had told him that the issue was being delayed - but the date was not specified.

Each stamp has the year microprinted at the top right, outside the design:

Royal Mail have confirmed to us that the stamps will be issued at Post Office branches on 16 October.  Given that we received the Railway booklet only this week, and have not yet received our advance delivery of Cattle Faststamps I suspect that it's actually the despatch from Tallents House which may be delayed, possibly to have them sent out with the Christmas issue.

Clearly the order preparation and despatch area at Tallents House is still suffering from Gold Medal stress which will continue for a while.  One of our contacts received his standing order July 27 Olympic Prestige Stamp Book on 21 September.

UPDATE 9 October:
I had a telephone report today that one office in Middlesex is selling these stamps already, and put them on sale last Friday (5th October)

Postmarks now added to our webpage for this issue, but expect more to come this weekend. 

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Autumn 2012 stamp issues from Royal Mail

Olympic and Paralympic Games Memories: 27 September

No details of this have yet been announced, as the content will not be known until the completion of the Paralympic Games.

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Classic Locomotives of Scotland: retail booklet 27 September

Four Machin 1st class definitives - should have source code MCND - and two Scottish railway stamps:

1st Class – BR D34 Nos. 62471 and 62496
Two former North British Railway 4-4-0, “Glens”, LNER and BR Class D34, 62471, Glen Falloch and 62496 Glen Loy at Ardlui on 09 May 1959, the West Highland Line from Glasgow to Fort William and Mallaig. They were built by the NBR at Cowlairs in 1920/21 to the design of W P Reid.

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Pictorial Faststamps: Cattle - 28 September 2012

Row 1: Irish Moiled, Welsh Black, Highland
Row 2: White Park, Aberdeen Angus, Red Poll

There is more details of these on our website.

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Space Science - 16 October 2012

50th anniversary of the launch of the first British satellite Ariel 1

More details of these can be found on our website.

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Christmas:  6 November 2012 

The Christmas stamps this year have been designed by Webb and Webb using new illustrations by Axel Scheffler - the artist who illustrated the children’s classic The Gruffalo. As usual the stamps will be in standard and large letter definitive size and self adhesive.  There will also be a conventionally-gummed miniature sheet containing all stamps, booklets of 12 x 1st and 12 x 2nd stamps, and a Smilers Generic sheet with (updated) 4 x 2nd, 4 x 1st, 2 x 86p and 2 x £1.28 stamps.

Correction: As Brian points out in the comment, this year's prices will be  87p, £1.28 and £1.90.  The pictures shown are the preliminary ones we were provided with in February. 
And as Trevor pointed out, the date we were originally given by Royal Mail and which I used without checking the calendar, was Sunday 11th.  Now confirmed as Tuesday 6th.

(Click on the images for a larger version)

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