It's not vandalism, it's "Royal Mail" gold on postboxes!

Royal Mail yesterday revealed that it will be painting some of its iconic and much-loved red post boxes gold to celebrate every Team GB and ParalympicsGB gold medal win during the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

This will be a unique, highly visible and fitting way to recognise the successes of Team GB and ParalympicsGB during this summer’s global sporting events. The UK is believed to be the first country to paint its post boxes gold to celebrate Olympic and Paralympic gold medal wins.

A dedicated team will be on standby to transform the specially selected post boxes within days of a win.  The post boxes chosen will, wherever possible, be in the home-town of the winning athlete, or both home-towns for teams of two. To celebrate a gold medal win by teams of more than two competitors, the post box chosen to be painted gold will be in a location relevant to all team members.

The gold boxes will remain in use and customers will be able to post mail in these boxes as normal. Mail collections from the boxes will also be unaffected.  The boxes will be repainted in Royal Mail's traditional red in due course.

Royal Mail demonstrated how the boxes will change from red to gold by painting a box in near to Westminster Abbey, London.

Mark Thompson, Olympics Director, Royal Mail and Postman, Paul Sheldrake apply the finishing touches to a post box in Westminster, central London. Photo: Justin Grange

PRESS ASSOCIATION Photos: David Parry/PA

If you spot one, send send us a photo with location, we'll upload some here.

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Bradley Wiggins Tour de France miniature sheet?

It happened for the England Victory in the Rugby World Cup in 2003 and again for England's Ashes win at cricket over Australia in 2005.  I have to agree with Paul on his blog that this is another great sporting achievement which ranks with those as being deserving of a philatelic commemoration.

And I reckon if they weren't up to their ears in the Olympics, Royal Mail would be working flat out with Getty Images, one of the design agencies, and Walsall Security Printers to have a miniature sheet out in the post offices within the next month, showing Bradley Wiggins and his team-mates.

What do you think?

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Smilers Stamps on demand in Olympic Athletes Village!

Copied from Graham Howard's Smilers-Info website:

Smilers Booth at Olympic Village Post Office  

Yink Ltd have tweeted us to advise that they will be manning a Smilers Booth in the Olympic Village Post Office. Unfortunately, access is provided to Olympic Village pass-holders only, i.e. athletes and workforce. Does anyone out there have access to the Olympic Village Post Office?  If so, can they get us a photo of the booth please and perhaps comment on the products available? (22/07)

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Please help Graham, or leave a comment here - thanks!

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Where to get the London 2012 Olympic Gold Medal stamps?

A list of the Post Offices which will be selling the Olympic Games Gold Medal stamps is now on the Stamp Magazine website for download.

Well-designed London 2012 Olympic stamp from Australia

It's not often I divert off to foreign parts, but I receive a big packet from Australia this morning, and the postage included two sheets of their first Olympic 2012 stamp.

I like this, because it is unmistakeably about London (routemaster bus and landmarks), Australia (flag) and the Olympics (rings), but at the same time due to the colours used it isn't fussy.

If you are interested you can see the whole sheets and the rest of the stamps on the Stampboards forum.

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Diamond Jubilee Machin & Wilding from Prestige Stamp Book

I should have provided these Diamond Jubilee PSB images much earlier, my apologies to Chris who sent them on 2 June. 

The first shows clearly the MPND code on the Jubilee Machin from the 31 May PSB.  The other shows phosphor bands well clear of the perforations on the definitive pane in the booklet.   In my experience the shortness at the top is not matched by phosphor over-running the perforations at the foot of the pane, so the overall height of the phosphor band is less than the gap between the perforations.

If I could scan like this I could tell whether our stock is really as short as that!

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Marshall Islands first to show GB Machins on stamps?

We think this is the first foreign stamp set to show Great Britain Machin definitives. Issued on 6 February 2012 the Marshall Islands miniature sheet marks the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and contains 6 x $1.05 stamps each illustrated with a British Machin definitive.

The stamp illustrations show the 10p orange brown, 20p bright green, 30p olive-green litho printing, 40p azure, 50p self-adhesive 2009 security issue*, and 60p light emerald. All the illustrations are slightly larger than life-size and have a line through the face value.

 * The security details are not very clear here but if you click on the image you should get a larger version.

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XXX Olympiad London 2012 Olympic Games 'postmark'.

I noticed this surprise 'postmark' on an internet forum.

I'm making enquiries as to what it's status is - postmark or cachet - whether it is actually used at the Games venue or applied elsewhere, and how to obtain more!

A similar rubber stamp is applied to the inside of the Smilers Stamps folder:

 

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London 2012 Olympic Gold Medal stamps- as it happens

I wonder how many websites and blogs will be created to list all the Team GB Olympic medal winners, and how many of these will list all the gold medal winners with pictures of the stamps generated by Royal Mail?  (See our original report and the design of the Gold Medal stamps here.)

This blog doesn't lend itself to doing that.  If I constantly update a blog entry it will slip off the first page viewed as other philatelic news breaks.  As we get the pictures - and at the moment I don't know whether Royal Mail will send them to us by email every day - I'll update the page on our website, but it may not be possible to keep this up-to-the-minute.  For one thing the Norfolk and Norwich Philatelic Society Summer Stamp and Postcard Fair will be keep me busy all day on 4th August!

On the Smilers Stamps website, Graham Howard has set up a new page which "we hope to feature details of all these new stamps and sheets in a new page Gold Medal Winners", so I won't duplicate that in this blog.  There is also a link to Graham's page at the foot of this page ('links')

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Is Norwich Sorting Office heading for 21st Century? YES!

Something's afoot at Norwich's Royal Mail sorting office, but we don't know what it is!

Mail originating in much of central and eastern Norfolk is usually postmarked in Norwich, using an old Universal machine which has seen better days and rarely seems to have enough ink to make a good impression.

If this was from Norwich (it's from Mount Pleasant) we would think it better than normal!

But this week our mail is receiving the new Peterborough ink-jet postmark:

This suggests that Norwich's old machine may be retiring at last, and that we will soon have an ink-jet machine.  It may be that our customers will know before we do!  Do let us know!

UPDATE: Our customer Stuart confirms that Norwich now has an ink-jet postmark.  I wish I'd used lighter-coloured stamps!

Royal Mail

Norwich

Mail Centre

11-07-2012

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