John Hedgecoe exhibition at Sainsbury Centre, Norwich

A major collection of portrait photographs by the late John Hedgecoe, who restored Oxnead Hall, near Aylsham, has been given to the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, by his family.

In June 1966 he undertook a 20-minute shoot in the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace – depicting the monarch in profile in the 14th year of her reign.

The Queen selected her preferred picture and the sculptor Arnold Machin made a plaster bust, which Hedgecoe then snapped for the postage stamps in use to this day.

Thanks to those 45 years of mass production the royal portrait is believed to be the most frequently reproduced image – of anyone or anything – in the world.

We know the stamps as 'Machins' but if the photographer's involvement had been more widely known, maybe we would be referring to them as 'Hedgecoes'? After all they followed the series which uses photographs by Dorothy Wilding!

The Face of the Artist: Photographs by John Hedgecoe can be seen at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (telephone 01603 593199; website www.scva.ac.uk) from Tuesday until December 4.

Faststamps packs & various FDCs now available

Added to our online shop today (click here):

Thomas the Tank Engine booklet FDCs
WIlliam Morris prestige stamp book FDCs - Machins and Christmas 2nd class
Faststamps - birds 3 FDCs
All Faststamps packs - Birds 1 -3 and the original Machin pack.

More items will be added over the next few days!

Philatelic supplies increasingly centralised, and not just here.

As they issue more and more stamps, and produce more varieties of them, postal authorities seem to be putting the clock back in stamp collecting, by making collectors work harder to find the stamps they want. 

The number of 'philatelic outlets' in British post offices has halved in 12 years, whilst what they stock has also been reduced.  Where once you could expect them to match the Philatelic Bureau, providing stamps for 12 months from the date of issue, the situation is now much different and we were even told about one designated philatelic office which returned on the day of issue all the 2011 Country definitives.  And we're not alone in the UK.

According to Linn's Stamp News in 2003 the USPS had 336 cities where formal philatelic centres were located.  Now it is estimated that no more than 25 are still operating, and two offices which previously supplied a specialist mail order service (including plate number blocks or coil strips, and different formats not specifically identified by the USPS's 'Stamp Fulfilment Services' have) been closed leaving specialist dealers and collectors no source for their needs.


Some collectors in the UK complain that their post offices do not receive every stamp issue, something denied by Royal Mail.  In the US this is definitely true.  The recently issued 'Forever' Purple Heart stamp was designed to avoid the perennial stamp being reprinted every year with a new value.  Yet some offices were sent 44c stamps instead in order to use up existing stocks before the NVI stamp was distributed!

And this follows weeks after the USPS's Stamp Services Division issued a document which included the statement entitled "Stamp Availability is Critical to Customer Satisfaction".  This included the direction that "postmasters must have all commemoratives on sale for 90 days from the date of issue" - no matter that some postmasters don't even receive stocks until a couple of weeks after the date of issue if then!

Is it any wonder that people are stopping their collections when adding to them is made more difficult and more costly?   Philatelic Bureaux are more efficient, but only in supplying what they want to supply.  We hear that Royal Mail (ie the Bureau) is being "plagued with numerous enquiries from collectors wanting particular source code numbers and letters" on Machin definitives.  Well, there's a surprise!  No word on the official (or unofficial) response of the Bureau's Customer Service Operatives.

Table of Philatelic Counters according to the January 1999 and June 2011 British Philatelic Bulletins.

Jan 1999	June 2011
Bath	Trowbridge Wilts
Belfast	-
Birmingham	-
Brighton	-
Bristol	Bristol
Cambridge	Cambridge
Canterbury	-
Cardiff	-
Chester	Chester
Colchester	Colchester
Coventry	-
Croydon	Croydon
Durham	Durham
Edinburgh	Edinburgh
Exeter	Exeter
Gatwick Airport	-
Glasgow	Glasgow
Gloucester	Stroud
Grimbsy	Grimsby
Guildford	-
Harrogate	Harrogate
Leeds	-
Leicester	-
Liverpool	-
London, Lombard St	London, Eastcheap
London, Trafalgar Sq	London, Trafalgar Sq
Manchester	-
Newcastle upon Tyne	-
Norwich	Norwich
Nottingham	Nottingham
Oxford	-
Plymouth	Plymouth
Portsmouth	Portsmouth
Southampton	Newport, Isle of Wight
Southend-on-Sea	Southend-on-Sea
Stevenage	Stevenage
Stratford-on-Avon	-
Truro	Truro
Windsor	-
York	York

90th Birthday of HRH Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh

Royal Mail has issued a premium-priced commemorative sheet today to mark the 90th Birthday of Prince Philip, the Queen's Consort.

The sheet comprises ten 1st class Union Flag stamps alongside photographs taken throughout HRH Prince Phillip’s distinguished life. These include photographs from the Prince’s career in the Royal Navy to the present day in his role as Britain’s longest-serving royal consort. 

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Mail Competition: and does Royal Mail get anything for it?

Most people are aware that the UK mail processing industry has been opened up to competition.  A number of private companies handle business mail, passing it over to Royal Mail for the 'final mile' delivery - what is known as downstream access.

All this is carefully regulated and the amount that RM can charge to competitors is controlled by the mail regulator - so much for free and fair competition!  Here is an example of a Postage Paid Impression or Postage Paid Indicator from Victoria, Malta.  One would not expect that Royal Mail receives anything for handling this item of mail - it is simply incoming overseas mail.

What makes this interesting is that the item was from a UK Government Department: I'm guessing that they outsourced/off-shored the processing and production of the contents which were then mailed in from Malta.  I'm trying to find out which arm of government was responsible for this money-saving exercise which hasn't even provided income for RM's UK-based competitors, apparently!

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The Borrowers create unintended Faststamp varieties

Thanks to Vince Patel for reporting a remarkable situation which neither Royal Mail nor Post Office Ltd intended nor sanctioned.

This error came from the Harlow Post Office Post & Go machine, which had the Birds II stamps in it for ONLY FOUR DAYS  in February 2011!! 

Harlow Post Office was a non Birds office at the time and should have only issued the standard Machin type faststamps!  However Milton Keynes Post Office ran out of Post & Go Faststamps at the end of 2010 and Harlow PO let them borrow some of theirs. When Milton Keynes eventually got new stock in it was all Birds II stamps and to repay Harlow, they sent them Birds II  instead of Machin type faststamps, which they put in their machine!!! 

When Royal Mail discovered the mistake they instructed the staff at the PO to withdraw the Birds II stamps immediately and replace them with Machin type faststamps which they did on 23/02/11! All machines have now been upgraded to the smaller font and Birds series 3 stamps now!!

Vince obtained a set of 6 from another collector, half of which is shown below. This shows the importance of vigilance - and of always getting spare copies of anything, for other collectors. Remember, if you run out of cash, the machines do take cards!

Wales 1st class missing yellow now available

I'm pleased to report a successful holiday visit to Wales - we now have the 1st class country stamp from the 2006 printing with black ink in the 'yellow' cylinder, first reported last year.


You can buy singles and some blocks (including marginals) from our online shop.  At present we have no cylinder or date blocks: we are awaiting decisions from regular customers who may want these. 

What will follow Birds 4 Faststamps from the Post and Go machines?

No great queues at Norwich this morning, probably because collectors from other parts of East Anglia were able to buy the new Birds at their own Post and Go Post Offices, and we had birds in both machines, unlike day one of Birds 1 when the powers that be decided to leave Machin heads in one machine "for business people who might not like/want the birds."

I've been wondering for a while what will follow September's Birds 4 (Sea Birds) in 2012.  It seems sensible to perhaps change the Machin head for HM The Queen's Diamond Jubilee (we will have a new 1st class definitive for that in February) - other countries run ordinary stamps in parallel with machine-vended stamps, so why not.

And on that subject, it would be missing a trick for Royal Mail/The Post Office not to take advantage of the Olympics to have games-themed Faststamps, especially if they have Post and Go machines in the Games Village and at games venues.  We know they failed to grab the opportunity to have a presence at the Centenary Scout Jubilee at Chelmsford in 2007, but surely they will be at the games?

And the A-Z of the UK subject sounds like a possible contender for Faststamps, though maybe single-design rolls at specific locations? Imagine, the Forth Bridge or Edinburgh Castle would have to be sold at Edinburgh, while Stonehenge could be sold at Salisbury, and the Giant's Causeway at appropriate local offices in Antrim, and Belfast.  But the idea might fall down if they choose Land's End.


As the artist for the Birds, Robert Gillmor, is local to us he once again gets a big spread in the Eastern Daily Press (best regional newspaper in the UK), where we also get some clues.  Don't be surprised if we have animals after the birds.  However the 2005 Farm Animals (also in woodcut  style) were not Mr Gillmor's creations.

Early birds all over the country!

We are getting several reports of the Birds 3 Faststamps being put into Post & Go machines early.   
Apparently some offices have loaded them immediately on receipt, others as the reel needed changing, and we don't know whether any of the mistakes was rectified.  Of course if a supply of Birds 2 was exhausted and there were no Machin head Faststamps in reserve, it make sense to use what is available rather than leave the machines 'out of service'.

So far we've been told about - 

Old Street, London EC1 on 28 April - earliest yet

Leeds on 7 May
Chichester some time last week
Walsall at least 17 May, exact date unknown.
Windsor - 18 May in machine 2 with machine 1 continuing with Machins (as Norwich did for Birds 1)
Aldwych continued with Machins on 19th when they should have switched to Birds 3.
(Thanks to John McCallum for these last two.)


Machine 2 in St James Centre Edinburgh (003824) had reverted to Birds 2, by 30 June.



An eBay seller reports also that Bath and Exmouth also had early release. (Bath now confirmed as 6 May.)


Here's one from Walsall with yesterday's date, 17 May 2011:

 

Addendum - odd goings on at Walsall, where they don't know what day of the week it is!

My correspondent who sent the cover image above also sent me two sets of 6 x 1st, in an envelope postmarked 18.05.11 at 08.51pm.  However the receipts accompanying the Faststamps show that they were purchased on 19/05/2010 - 13.38.  Walsall's machine is obviously set to the wrong date.  So anybody who bought these on the official first day (19th) probably has receipts dated 20th.  [And my correspondent has pointed out MY error, that the receipt is actually dated 364 days before the date of issue!!]

At Harrogate, stamps bought from machine 2 on 28 May had a receipt dated 16th May 2023.
 

Have you found any other machines which already have the Birds 3 set?  On the other hand, when you visit after 18th, have you found any machines without the Birds 3?  Let us know - leave a comment!

Provisional Stamp Programme for 2012

Royal Mail has announced the programme of basic stamp issues for 2012 (edited to show dates):

10 January - Roald Dahl (author) - more children's books, or a tale of the unexpected ?

2 February - The House of Windsor (Kings and Queens 6) Set and MS

6 February - HM The Queen's Diamond Jubilee definitive
23 February - Britons of Distinction

8 March - Classic Locomotives of Scotland MS

20 March - World of Comics (Dandy, Beano, Eagle, Bunty - or Max Miller ??)

10 April - A-Z of the UK, part 2 (14 stamps)

15 May - Design Classics, Fashion

31 May - HM The Queen's Diamond Jubilee

19 June - Charles Dickens

16 July - Olympic and Paralympic Games (Welcome)

27 September - Olympic and Paralympic Games (Memories) [Stampex]

16 October - World of Dinosaurs
30 October - Space Science

8 November - Christmas 2012

Titles are provisional, and of course there will be the usual run of Smilers Sheets, Faststamps, retail booklets, prestige stamp books, and definitive variations to keep everybody busy.