February 2018 Slogan Postmarks

The first occasion in February marked by a slogan postmark is World Cancer Day.  The slogan actually started on 26 January so the first part of this record is a repeat of the January log.


World Cancer Day 4 February

LETS' BEAT CANCER

SOONER ON

WORLD CANCER DAY

4 FEBRUARY 2018

South Midlands Mail Centre 29 January and Home Counties North MC 26 January 2018.

 

Thanks to RW for a much better example with text on 5 lines, from Bristol Mail Centre on 30 January.

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I'm hoping that Royal Mail will, on the appropriate weeks, mark the Votes for Women campaign and Royal Air Force Centenary.  The latter is on 1 April (after the Centenary stamp issue, so no FDCs with a slogan?), and the royal assent was given to the Representation of the People Act on 6 February 1918.  It's unlikely that a slogan will run from then until the stamps are issued on 15th, though.

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UPDATE 5 February
As predicted (hey, I'm getting good at this!) the Representation of the People Act is marked by a new slogan; MB sent this example from North West Midlands dated last Saturday 03/02/2018.  The wording is:

100 Years since

the Representation

of the People

Act 1918

 

And the other layout from Mount Pleasant on 02-02-2018 (Friday on 2nd class)

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UPDATE 11 February

Royal Mail are supporting TeamGB at the winter olympics in Pyeongchang.  Thanks to a number of readers (KC, JE, MB, JC, GF & JG) who have sent in examples of this slogan while we were away.  These are the best of them.  The slogan #WeAreTheGreat has been chosen by/for TeamGB and is in use on twitter, instagram, Facebook etc.  It doesn’t look good unless you know!  Irregular printing of the Royal Mail Cruciform adds to the poor display in some cases.  As usual there are 5- and 4-line versions from different machines.

Supporting

Team GB at

Pyeongchang 2018

Winter Olympics

#WeAreTheGreat

 

 

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UPDATE 13 February
In previous years Royal Mail has urged us to Send a Card for St Valentines Day (missing the 'Saint' as so many do):

This year we have a quotation from John Donne - different, to say the least.  Thanks to MB & JG for North West Midlands on 12 February and Peterborough MC on 8 February

"More than kisses,

letters mingle souls"

- John Donne

Valentine's Day 2018

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UPDATE 19 February
With St Valentine's Day out of the way we might have had a slogan for a big event in London, but there wasn't one for Stampex.  Two people have sent me the slogan for London Fashion Week, but only one layout so far.  The one shown is North West Midlands (Wolverhampton) 17/02/2018, it was also in use at Cumbria Dumfries & Galloway on 15/02/2018.

LONDON
FASHION
WEEK
16-20 FEBRUARY 2018

And one from Exter Mail Centre 17.01.2018 in the other format.

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UPDATE 1 March
Thanks to peterh on Stampboards, I can show this example of January's Burns Night slogan running at Southampton Mail Centre a month later on 27/02/2018!

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UPDATE 7 March
Just creeping into February is the slogan for World Book Day which is on 1 March.  This slogan was used at North West Midlands on 28 February, and I assume nationwide and only on the one day.  Royal Mail's media department is silent on the subject as usual.

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No more heavy bags at London Stampex

As part of the reorganisation of their selling space, Royal Mail will not take the usual quantities of stock to London's Stampex event at Islington's Business Design Centre from 14-17 February 2018.  

Purchasers of large or bulky products such as albums and framed stamps from the Royal Mail stand will receive free postage and packing and their purchases will be posted on to them after the show.

The new stand will have no Post and Go machines.  The full range of definitive stamps will be available, as well as special stamps, although not in the quantities that have been available in the past.  However, more popular stock will be replenished overnight should that be necessary.   

The Mail by Sea Post and Go stamps will be issued on the opening day, and the Votes for Women set of 8 stamps in 4 values will be available on day 2, 15th February.

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This is why so much mail is pen-cancelled

Following the arrival of yet another vandalised item of mail, and a letter from a customer about a Crown Office which refused to cancel the stamps on his special delivery letter, I had some discussion with PO Ltd on twitter.

This is the sad item of postal history:

Two parts of POL's reply to me are relevant:

Now I know, and you know, that Special Delivery mail is not subject to machine processing at Mail Centres, therefore it won't go into the sorting and cancelling machine, and will not get postmarked.  Uncancelled stamps on parcels and packets MAY get a packet handstamp, or the wavyline canceller, but everything else - no, nothing.

Except, of course, that the alert postman or woman in charge of the secure 'Cage' will see uncancelled stamps and get his pen out.  As he should, for revenue protection.

Sad isn't it?  The postal service is trying to prevent reuse of stamps, and it's agreement with the first acceptor doesn't seem to provide for the cancellation of the high value stamps that are used.

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January Postmark Bulletin errors.

By now the edition of the Royal Mail Postmark Bulletin dated (bizarrely) 3 January and including Handstamps for January and February will be landing on doormats, or be downloaded.  

Note that some are included which were not on the 'Postmarks' webpage, but several that should have been included have been omitted.  Specifically 14422 to 14429 have not been included in the Bulletin.  As images should be removed from that webpage now that the Bulletin is out (that's the idea, despite the continued presence of those that were in the December issue), I'll show them here.

Also, the latest issue includes 14435 which is for Votes for Women, but not 14431-4.  Since we received the emailed Bulletin on Monday, 16 new handstamps have been added to the webpage, most of them for February issues, so do look again.

 

And remember, you have until 10 days after the hard copy arrives on your desk to send covers for postmarking.  Currently this means that Handstamp Centres are dealing with late Game of Thrones and advance Votes for Women (and Mail by Sea) and in February/March they will still be dealing with the latter two when advance supplies of the RAF Centenary covers are getting to them.  Very important to mark your covers and outer packets with the correct numbers and dates.

UPDATE 2 February 
A second Bulletin, dated 26 January has been sent out by email today.

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Do you use pre-printed stamp albums?

This is addressed only to those collectors who use pre-printed stamp albums for their GB collections.

I have addressed this subject several times before but it has never been more important.  Royal Mail have decided to change the policy on sales periods for 'special' stamp issues.  For some time the old policy of "withdrawn after 1 year" has been flexed to allow for the continued sales of stamps issues in a series - Classic Locomotives, World War I, etc.

Now they have decided that the less popular subjects will be printed in lower quantities (to avoid wastage) and go off-sale between 6-9 months after the issue date, whilst still allowing for sales at (one) Stampex.   No specific details have yet been announced.

Some album supplements will be appearing soon.  To ensure you have all the stamps you need, you have to guess which ones the publishers will include.  Look back at this post from six years ago: the situation has not improved.

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Computer Systems Upgrade

The main iMac here at Norvic Towers has been labouring away since its emergency purchase in autumn of 2011, with only regular software updates and no update to the operating system.

Since that time Apple have released three different operating systems, and we finanly decided that we really ought to get up-to-date so that we could continue to update the software as well.  That was done over the weekend, together with memory upgrades.  Of course nothing goes totally smoothly, but after a 60-minute discussion with Apple tech support regular back-ups are now working as they should, and all is well - fingers crossed!

But even though it was over the weekend this has upset the rhythm of the office, so we may be slow in responding to emails.  There were quite a few orders over the weekend but we hope to have these ready to despatch Tuesday afternoon as usual.  Thank you for your patience.

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First unexpected Machin of 2018 is probably the last from 2017

We are never surprised that the first Prestige Stamp Book of a year contains definitives with a year code from the previous year: that has become the norm.  So after that it is a waiting game until the first totally new and unexpected stamp appears, and this year we have had to wait less than a month.

News reached us last week of the second printing of the 50p dark grey or slate.  Yes, the second printing: the first was in on 180/9/2012 and the second was in October 2017.  This is a little-used value which postmasters tell me they cannot order, so presumably these are sold via Royal Mail's business user website.  My sub-postmaster thinks that it would be a useful value (like the non-existent 9p - for the difference between 2nd and 1st class letter rate) but he can't get it.  My thanks to RL for the picture.

We hope to have some soon: this is Norvic Checklist number 3051.7.

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Dark 1st class counter sheet M16L now in stock

First reported in Stamp Magazine the first counter sheets of the 1st class dark red were printed in December 2016 (coded M16L), but apparently buried in Post Office stores under later printings of M17L as very few appeared during 2017.

We are pleased to say that supplies have now started to appear but still not in great numbers.

I can show a cylinder block and date block but at present do not have any for sale.  The printing we have was on 12/12/16

 

These are now listed in our shop as 2914a.6.

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Blog Updates

This week we have updated the January and December slogan postmarks posts, the latter including several new Universal machine usages.

We've added to our webshop Game of Thrones stamps: 3 new Machins, Cartor N Ireland 2nd, and all the gummed versions of the stamps on the self-adhesive miniature sheet, plus the retail booklet.  The ordinary stamps from the sheet are widely available, as are Post and Go stamps (ok, not as widely available, but then there aren't many outlets in Norfolk either!).

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Special Handstamps and the Royal Mail Postmark Bulletin

I'm sure ere long Royal Mail will produce a January edition of their Postmark Bulletin, which will be the first since 1 December.

They seem to have fallen into the trap of so many service providers from local authorities to travel agents and insurance companies who put information onto a website, and assume that everybody will be able to find it there.  But like those organisations, Royal Mail can't satisfy all customers who don't seem to read everything that they are given!  So maybe people will read this, and then we will get fewer random emails asking, for instance, 'where are the Game of Thrones special handstamps?' and 'when we will get a new Bulletin?'.

This was included on page 10 of the last Bulletin.  It would be useful if Royal Mail's Bulletin dowload page had a link to the Postmarks page, but they don't spoon-feed, you have to do some work yourselves.

It's quite clear - there are two pages, one for the Bulletin and another for the postmarks announced since the last Bulletin.

Anybody else asking will get a reply with a link to this blog post.  Don't expect a long explanation or a wordy reply: it's all here.

UPDATE 20 January 2018:
I understand that Royal Mail's 'first' bulletin, which is not sent to us, does not have all the details that collectors want for first day postmarks in use for the Game of Thrones issue.  Shown below is the information that we were provided with.  FS1801-PL is the Belfast FD postmark applied to Royal Mail Post and Go fdcs.  The design incorporates the Iron Throne as shown on the Tallents House postmark, but with the legend "First Day of Issue Belfast".
 
(Incidentally for those who like consistency in their P&G FDC collection, the official ones this time use the Game of Thrones cover and not the usual P&G cover.)

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