New Imprint on Post and Go at BPMA in August

According to the GBStamp.co.uk blog A new BPMA Exhibition at Freeling House from August to October will mark the 80th anniversary of British Inland Airmail.

The Post and Go machine will dispense stamps with a new inscription (underprint or overprint depending on who you read), which will also include a pictorial airmail element.

The buried news is that 2nd class stamps will be dispensed instead of Union Flag.  Let's hope the IAR machine isn't affected by the sort of software errors that have occurred at Stampex and elsewhere over the last 12 months or so.

Note, I am not planning to make a trip to London to get these overprints.  I may have mint examples after Stampex, but no FDCs.

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NCR Post and Go pack issued 7 July 2014

The new NCR Post and Go Pack was mentioned last month and we can now show the actual pack and stamps.

As explained on the reverse of the pack, the 'Service Indicia' which was previously printed on plain white labels is now printed on Post and Go stamps (or Faststamps).

These stamps (with the same values) are readily available at Post Office branches with the NCR self-service machines, the number of which will increase from the current 225 (mix of old and new machines) to over 700 by the end of 2015.

The stamps in the pack have a different datastring to those from the machines, however, and don't even mimic the 'live' versions which have kiosk numbers 67 upwards.  These have a datastring similar to that in IAR and previous exhibition machines and so unlike those from either the Wincor-Nixdorf or NCR machines.

B7GB14 C001-1840-015

This indicates: Reel B, Month 7, Great Britain, Year 14,  Machine C001*
The 1840 is supposed to be the session number and 015 indicates the pack number (this is the 15th Post and Go presentation pack).
The pack doesn't explain the VAT codes which are (in sequence as shown) E4 B4 F4 C4 and H4.

* The July Philatelic Bulletin quotes this as C002 but that is wrong.   Also, both brown and blue stamps show Reel B.  If nothing else this shows that they are not printed together, but in two very separate major print runs.

Royal Mail are not producing first day covers of these stamps.

One good thing to come from this is that Tallents House are using up old stocks of base stamps, the blue stamps being coded MA12, and the brown undated! 

A reminder of what a other datastrings looks like Wincor (top), machine NCR (centre) compared with ones from the pack:

It's Dog Awareness Week - 30 June - 4 July 2014

Royal Mail has launched the annual Dog Awareness Week (30 June-4 July) to raise understanding of the issue of dog attacks on postmen and women - and members of the public.

On average around nine postmen and women a day are attacked by dogs across the UK with over 3,300 attacks taking place from April 2013 to April 2014, an 8 per cent increase on the previous year.

The number of attacks peaks during the school holidays.

Royal Mail wants to encourage responsible dog ownership and to appeal to dog owners to keep animals under control when the postman calls.

They look cute, but they can be vicious when a stranger approaches their domain.  (From personal experience, it doesn't help if the regular postman feeds biscuits to the dog, and you are his relief - with no biscuits!)

A nationwide Dog Awareness Week postmark is to be applied to letters from 30 June

As they said at our delivery office, it would be a good idea to have a Dog Awareness sticker on ALL mail, rather than just the stamped mail, given that such a large percentage of the daily mailbag is either franked or has a postage-paid impression.

See more at: http://www.royalmailgroup.com/

UPDATE: new image from Home Counties North (thanks Rob)

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New Year comes to Post and Go Faststamps - and other reports

Well, we've reached the half-way point in the year so it's fitting that the first MA14 Faststamp report should reach us today.  Thanks to Dominic for the following reports and pictures, one of which has been modified to bring out the detail.

The Machin MA14 stamp is from Sutton, which may have gone live on 27 June:

This 2nd class was bought at Lavender Hill Battersea a couple of months ago, so the machine has probably been fixed by now, but the huge left margin suggests that the reel was not installed correctly - or there was a software fault.

Dominic also reports:

The new Islington Office (031004) opened as planned(16^th June).  Yesterday the 2 machines had 1^st class MA13 and 2^nd Class MA12. These machines have a modification which means you have to insert each coin rather than putting the whole lot in the bowl.

Robert sent this picture of a Post and Go label from a Paignton Wincor machine back in May with a band of printing missing:

New postmarks for Commonwealth Games and Great War issues

Some new postmarks have been added to our webpages for these new stamp issues.  Here are a few of them, with links to the website:

Commonwealth Games:

Great War

UPDATE 11 July 2014:  more Great War postmarks for 28 May have been added to the website today.

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They're the same - but different: stamps from the Great War prestige stamp book

The Great War prestige stamp book will be issued along with the set of stamps on 28 July 2014.  
UPDATE: See foot of post for news about the pictorial stamps in the same booklet.

The book is printed by Joh Enschede en Zonen and all of the definitive stamps have been printed by Enschede before, so is there nothing new in this list?

10p orange-brown Machin MPIL M14L - previously in Buckingham Palace PSB
20p bright green Machin MPIL M14L - ditto
£1 bistre-brown Machin MPIL M14L - ditto

1st class England Lion country definitive - previously in British Army PSB 2007
1st class Scotland Lion country definitive - previously in British Army PSB 2007
1st class Wales Dragon country definitive - previously in British Army PSB 2007
1st class Northern Ireland fields country definitive - previously in Classic Locos PSB 2014

So let's compare them side by side, with the new stamps on the right in all cases.  In the case of the mixed pane, the phosphor bands on the Buckingham Palace pane have a more matt finish when held at an angle to the light, the new ones are less visible.  The iridescent layer appears to be easier to read on the new stamps.

10p - my new example is a lighter shade

 

20p - little to distinguish, apart from the phosphor

 

England 1st - most notably different in shade and density.  The silver is different (but is still silver), and the tail of the lion appears to be further from the left edge. The figure of value is lower.

 

Scotland 1st - the new one slightly paler. The apparent dark band at the left must be show through from the selvedge of the Army stamp.  The phosphor bands, whilst less visible when held at an angle to the light (the Army one is very matt), is more visible when viewed straight on!

Wales 1st - aside from the phosphor differences, there is a very distinct difference in shade here, almost like the sheet printing when the yellow ink was dropped.  These are printed in 4-colour process (plus silver) but the difference is very clear.

 

Northern Ireland 1st - again, not a lot of difference here, as you would expect as the 'old' version was only issued in February.  Both have the microprinted '©2001' at the foot of the figure '1' but it is very difficult to read as even this uses the four colours. But whereas the other countries' stamps have phosphor bands almost the same width as the British Army ones, this has much narrower phosphor bands than in the Classic Locos book (ie wider visible space between them).

£1 wood-brown (RM)/bistre-brown(SG).  The new version is lighter and the iridescent layer is easier to read.  The phosphor on the new stamp is not much different to that on the earlier one.

We can now clarify that the King George V 1d red reproductions are not labels, but are all imperforate, and the red is printed on cream to mimic the paper used originally.

The rest of the stamps, and the special postmarks for this issue are shown on our webpage.

UPDATE 18 August 2014
The pictorial stamps issued in sheets have two phosphor bands except for the 'Starburst' painting and 'We Will Remember Them' poetry stamps which are all-over phosphor.  We now know that all 6 pictorial stamps in the PSB have all-over phosphor which means that at least 4 will have a separate listing in some catalogues.  They are certainly different stamps and we have them in stock now.

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Carelessness must be the cause of another Perth Post and Go error

Let's face it, my website has had its fair share of typos, and other errors.  That's what happens when you copy the page for one stamp issue to use again for another one, with all text suitably edited, images changed, etc etc.  Yes mistakes occur - and I'm grateful to readers for pointing them out!

But when you are responsible for producing stamps, you'd expect that they would be correct.  No, mistakes occur there as well, though rarely on British stamps.  The Buckingham Palace prestige stamp book did allege that the picture of Sir Winston Churchill on the selvedge of one pane was at Buckingham Palace when he was in fact at the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, but that didn't affect the stamps themselves.

So we come to the latest Post and Go Faststamp error, yet another one to have occurred at the Perth Congress. Now Perth, as we all know, is in Scotland, else why would the Scottish Philatelic Societies have their Congress there?   Well, the first Post and Go stamps to be dispensed were fine, but the receipt shows Perth to be in Wiltshire.  Yes, it's a hangover from the Salisbury show.  (As machinmaniac points out, this was 2013, but the point is valid)

This was on eBay - clearly showing the address of Perth, Wiltshire, SP1 3NR

After the many errors at Stampex, we were assured that quality control would be improved for future issues.  Perhaps that should now be extended to text on the receipts as well as the stamps themselves!

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200th anniversary of Lord's Cricket Ground - special slogan postmark

Royal Mail are really taking collectors back to the 1960s now, with special slogan postmarks popping up all over the place, for collectors to find by chance.  

Four days ago, this message appeared on twitter - from Royal Mail News (http://twitter.com/royalmailnews):

Howzat! We're celebrating the bicentenary of @HomeOfCricket with this special postmark!
It’ll appear on mail delivered to the NW8 postcode area, home of Lord’s

However I didn't notice the message, and was only alerted to the new postmark by one of our readers who sent this:
  

 

Is Windy Miller giving somebody out? Well maybe Royal Mail News, because our correspondent is in Hertfordshire, not St John's Wood, so the usage is not quite as restricted as they suggest.  Or it maybe something to do with the fact that the first match MCC played at Lord's was against Hertfordshire CCC (see BBC News).

Either way, this is a postmark that Cricket collectors will be looking for, so if you live in St John's Wood or Hertfordshire and have one to spare, please let me know.  Many thanks.

UPDATE: We have had reports of another example being received in Romford, Essex, and one from Gatwick MC to .... Pretoria South Africa!

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EBAY - a request

Please would everybody who makes a report about something 'seen on eBay' provide the eBay item number and the end date (and if possible the seller ID).  This will make it much easier to find the things you are reporting, to investigate, and to grab images to show here.

Thank you.

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Where the L ??

Most collectors will remember the 2009 NAFAS mixed booklet on which one of the letters A was mysteriously dropped from the iridescent text.  Then an M was found to be missing from both 1st and 2nd class Large business sheet printings also from 2009.

Now we have been told about another missing letter, on this year's 1st and 2nd class Large counter sheets, which have MAI   ROYAL near the top, above the 'ST' and 'ND' indicating that the same iridescent cylinder was used for both values.  Thanks to Rob for alerting us to this!

Unlike the MCIL example - where other booklets had the complete text - these are unlikely to be variants meriting a separate entry in our checklist.  It is most likely that the same cylinder will be used for any subsequent 2014 printings - although if you find otherwise, we'd be delighted to be proved wrong!

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