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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Litho-printed England and Wales definitive stamps now available

The Cartor-printed litho England and Wales 1st and 2nd class country stamps have been delivered*, so we can show them and the comparison with previous printings.

The four sheets of 50 stamps are printed on one press plate, shown by the grid positions in the lower left corner:

The supplies we have are with black plate (they aren't cylinders) C1, dated 10/07/12.  As mentioned previously, Cartor cannot print the date with an ink-jet add-on, so the date is on the plate.  We have already shown the Wales 1st class and England 2nd class from C2 dated 11/07/12.  The Scotland 1st & 2nd also exist with two printing dates, but we cannot yet confirm that the plate number was changed.   When the 87p Wales stamp was reprinted on 02/07/12 the plate number remained C1 although it was clearly a new black plate.

So here for comparison are the De La Rue printings* (on the left) and the new Cartor printing on the right.  As you can see the Cartor have much more yellow in them.  You may recall that when De La Rue reprinted the Wales 1st there was too much yellow, and so the yellow was dropped and two black cylinders were used, although the later print has never been distributed by Royal Mail Tallents House and is not separately listed in Gibbons' Concise catalogue (W99 is still listed as being 'blue-green, greenish-yellow, silver, and black).
* The DLR stamps shown here may not be their most recent printings. I took these from stock and they are the latest ones we bought from Tallents House.  Other printings may have shade differences, but probably not as marked as these.

ENGLAND - De La Rue v. Cartor

 
WALES 2nd - De La Rue v. Cartor. As well as having more yellow, the Cartor printing is much sharper, especially around the value.  However, some parts of the leek are lacking the detail (black) in the DLR print.

 WALES 1st - De La Rue v. Cartor. This is the DLR with yellow.

WALES 1st - De La Rue v. Cartor. This is the DLR with black instead of yellow.

I've shown the two De La Rue printings side-by-side before.   I think it is clear from these pictures that the original DLR has yellow in the dragon, but the dragon on the Cartor printing - although lighter than either DLR printing - shows no yellow, and it only appears in the green background.

So as to keep everything together, the Scotland 1st & 2nd are reproduced again, with DLR on the left:

* UPDATE:  The England and Wales stamps will be available from Tallents House from 3 January 2013 and are being distributed with the new colour Machin definitives.  I'm presuming they will be distributed on Standing Orders where appropriate.
Stock codes are:
ES501 - England 2nd
ES601 - England 1st
WS501 - Wales 2nd
WS601 - Wales 1st

Apologies for not mentioning this before.

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Printing dates for new Machin and country definitive stamps

We earlier showed pictures of the Cartor-printed England and Wales country 1st and 2nd class definitives with printing dates of 11/07/12. and cylinders C1 C1 C1 C2.

We now have a report that all four stamps also exist with printing dates 10/07/12, and black cylinder C1.

The new 50p slate-grey Machin due for issue on 3 January is reported with a printing date of 18/09/12.

More new dates will be added as we hear of them.

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2012 Lest We Forget Poppy stamp - whole sheet

I'm now able to show the whole sheet of Poppy stamps issued on 23 October.  This was first reported in the Royal Mail Philatelic Bulletin for September but had not at that time been mentioned by any other source, to collectors or dealers.

(Unfortunately I have managed to delete the original post announcing this issue and can't recover it.  Apologies to those who added comments.)

Following reports of non-availability at many offices visited by our readers I checked with the Post Office customer service line, and (after being wrongly told that there were none this year), was advised that:
 
These stamps have been distributed to around 1000 branches, including all Crown* offices, and those with philatelic counters.  They have also been distributed to selected offices near military bases and are available to all branches to order via the Horizon system.  

There are fewer than 400 'Crown' offices now.  It seemed that remaining 10,800 offices weren't been told about the new stamp, so I don't know how they are supposed to know that they can order them.  It wouldn't be so bad, of course, if Tallents House standing order customers had had them distributed automatically, but as the stamp is not regarded as different enough from the previous versions of this stamp to be regarded as new, it was not sent to standing orders customers.  As the previous versions were gummed in a miniature sheet, and self-adhesive in an over-face value generic sheet, I don't see how they can be regarded as the same.  To order from Royal Mail, the product code is AS841.

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GB new issues - enough is enough...

Well, that was the declaration by 5-decade collector 'Machinhead' on the Stampboard forum.

Many collectors over the last decade have declaried that they had "finished with new issues", and Royal Mail is "killing the goose that lays the golden egg" - heck, we've had some of them commenting here as well .

I've been accused, in that forum discussion, of being an apologist and defender of Royal Mail, but regular readers here will know for themselves how true that is.  I started a second thread asking readers just what they wanted from Royal Mail, and in due course I will direct the policy makers to those discussions.

If you want to read what others are saying and take part, the threads are:

GB new issues - enough is enough...

 and

What would you like in Royal Mail's stamp programme

But if you want to take part, you must register, introduce yourself in the relevant thread, and follow the rules.  The owner has a robust approach to transgressions, so tread carefully until you know where you are!

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2013 Machin self-adhesive coil stamps to be sold to collectors

We've been told that Royal Mail has written to tell their collector customers of new arrangements for the sale of coil stamps:

"As of 03/01/2013 customers will be able to order Strips of 5, from the 10,000 Business Coils. These strips can be put on your Standing Order.

# New Issue – Order Code DC0200

# Visible Change – Order Code DC1200

# Non-Visible change – Order Code DC2200"

According to our correspondent, "When I updated my Standing Order this morning, it was news to the Philatelic Staff, who man the phones."

Presumably they will also sell them as strips of 10 or more if multiple strips of 5 are ordered.  Without further information we can only guess, but this may only apply to new stamps from next year.  Thus initially it will be the 1st class red, when printed, but the 2nd class blue may not be available until the 2013 version is printed.

Just as this came as a surprise to the Customer Service staff manning the Tallents House telephones, it was a complete surprise to me, as the dealer Account Managers have not yet sent this news to us!!

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Christmas Robin Faststamps have year code MA12

Chris has sent this picture of the collectors set of Robins from Trafalgar Square.

If you zoom in, you can see that the grey printing ROYAL MAIL in the background shows MA12 just above the 'g' of the weight.   So when this is repeated next year, it will be interesting to see which offices didn't use all their 2012 allocation!  Post Office will undoubtedly say that it is for stock control but sceptics (and cynics) will say that it is so that the collector will buy them again next year.

Two more pictures, from Richard:

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New Madonna and Child printings for Christmas 2012

Several people have reported new printing dates for the Madonna Christmas stamps currently on sale in Post Office branches.

1st class
17/08/12 (Friday)
20/08/12 (Monday)

2nd class
10/08/12 (Friday)
13/08/12 (Monday)

If anybody has any other dates we'll be pleased to add them to this list.

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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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Post and Go Branches on Google Map

Brian Sinnot (postagelabelsuk.com) has put in a lot of time creating a

Google Map showing Post and Go Locations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Well done Brian, that's a great effort, and reveals the Post and Go wastelands that are Northern Ireland, the Highlands & Islands of Scotland - and North Wales.

In Northern Ireland there is only Belfast; in the wilds of Scotland there is only Inverness north-west of a line between Aberdeen and Glasgow; and in Wales there is a desert west and north of a line between Aberystwyth, Kidderminster and Chester.

In comparison East Anglia is richer than we thought - Norwich, Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich all having one or more Post and Go machines.

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