Not just George Best slogan - in fact the whole team

Following on from the special slogans for the Doctor Who stamp issue, we have been told that there is a George Best slogan being used on all UK mail posted to BT addresses in Northern Ireland from 9 to 15 May. 

As far as I know it is triggered at certain (not sure if all) the intelligent mail processor centres in the UK when a BT postcode is recognised.

A picture will be added if anybody in Northern Ireland sends us one! 

Update 15 May:
Thanks to John & Patrick we now have confirmation that there were indeed 11 different postmarks in use for all the team members.  However, until examples are found, nobody will know whether any of them was actually used and from which sorting offices.

This is the list:

S (Sheffield)                               Banks

WD (Watford)                             Barnes

BT  (Belfast)                               Best

SA  (Swansea)                           Charles

NE63 (Ashington)                      Charlton

E12  (Manor Park/Redbridge)    Greaves

DN3  (Doncaster area)               Keegan

AB10-13, 15, 16, 21-25  (Aberdeen area) Law

EH (Edinburgh)                         Mackay

IG11  (Barking)                          Moore

DH2,3 (Chester-le-Street)         Robson

As before - please send your images of these if you find any!

UPDATE:
Thanks to Kevin McShane, Hon Secretary North of Ireland Philatelic Society, Belfast, I can now show some examples of the George Best slogan.  Kevin writes:  "About one third of my mail was cancelled with the George Best Slogan with most of the mail arriving with the usual orange coding across the stamp and no slogan.  Northern Ireland really only has one main mail centre at Mallusk, Belfast.  The Prostrate Cancer slogan was also in use on the 13th.  I got a few covers sent from Liverpool to BT1 however these arrived with a standard Warrington Mail Centre cancel and no reference to the football slogan."

[Details of the stamps, booklets etc including retail cylinder book are in the main post.]

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Report from Australia 2013 Stampshow Melbourne

The first overseas venture for the Post and Go machines to Melbourne has not been without its problems.  Sadly Murphy seems to have made an appearance and anything that could go wrong.....

From our correspondent at the show:

The machines were supposed to arrive on Monday, but got delayed by Customs. 

They finally arrived today at 10am (2 hours before the opening). The poor bloke looking after them had only one machine that worked (at least initially) and the other crashed after each transaction (due to internet problems, they chose an unreliable provider here).

Anyway, for your edification, attached is a scan of the collector strips from the second machine (A4 - the one that kept crashing). A3 was finally got working and I got a few from it as well. The queue was building and, with a limit of 99 stamps in one transaction, I felt a little bad trying to monopolise slow and troublesome machines. 

These are the images Peter sent us:

It is because of the uncertainty that I have been unable to say whether we will have any supplies for other than regular customers.   It does seem likely that we will have supplies from both machines but at this stage we don't know what the price will be because the costs are not finalised.

Chris has sent a picture of the Machin strip received from Tallents House together with the receipt.  I imagine that this is an accurate facsimile of the ones issued in Australia, but it is quite misleading suggesting that the receipt was produced at the Exhibition Building in Carlton, Vic.  And the overprint from the show doesn't include the word World that the Edinburgh overprint does (thanks for the report 'Anonymous').  What a blunder!

The cheapest way to have an obviously local product is to have a joined pair of 1st class stamps - disappointingly Edinburgh only produced collectors strips of 6.  Collectors could be forgiven for giving this all a wide berth!

UPDATE 13 May 2013
We're now able to show you the Personalised Smilers sheets available from Australia 2013. These are available customised with a photo or with the show logo, which appears in position 1 on all sheets of 10:

Some misalignment occurred in printing some sheets, resulting in the partial omission of the 'f' in the word 'of' on the labels. The grey vertical band at the centre of the images is where the clear plastic of the carrier overlaps.

UPDATE 15 May
Thanks to Alec W and his contact for providing pictures of Australia 2013 covers with the Faststamps affixed, and a pseudo-postmark or cachet.

UPDATE 16 May
Another correspondent sent us these images showing the pair from each machine

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Stamp News update 8 May 2013

As we have been away for a few days, here is another brief post to provide news of various matters.


Faststamps overprinted with 'Australia 2013 World Stamp Expo'

The UK-printed versions of the Australia 2013 Faststamps (with location-code GB) may now be ordered from Royal Mail Tallents House, in collectors sets of 6 at £6.42 ONLY:

Stock code ZS022 - Union Flag with Australia 2013 overprint 
Stock code ZS023 - Machin head with Australia 2013 overprint

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New Tariff Machin definitives 27 March

Official first day covers distributed by Royal Mail were all believed to have stamps printed by De La Rue all coded MA13.  However, we understand that some have the De La Rue Signed For stamps, but 78p, 88p and £1.88 stamps by Walsall coded M13L.  These may have been covers made up manually to be used as replacements for any which had been damaged in transit to standing order customers.

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88p Amber De La Rue sheet printing seen

The 88p DLR sheet-printed stamps have now appeared on eBay.  We hope to have these in stock soon.

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New Exhibition Sheet 2 August 2013

The Fédération Internationale de Philatélie (FIP) nominated Thailand as the country to host the World Stamp Exhibition in 2013, which will be held in Bangkok from 2nd to 14th August 2013, and will commemorate the 130th anniversary of Thai postage stamps and the establishment of the Thai postal service.  Royal Mail will issue the usual style of exhibition sheet, printed by Cartor Security Print and containing 20 x 1st class Hello stamps and 10 different pictorial labels.

Stamp News roundup 30 April 2013

I'm aware that finding all the news when it is scattered through many posts is difficult, and leads to mutliple duplication of comments, or comments where the answer is already shown on a different post.  So I've simplified things this week by putting all the news back in the original posts.

Details of the Football Heroes isssue, including pictures of the definitives from the Prestige Stamp book - which we now know has self-adhesive footballers in - are here.

The picture of the 1st class stamp in the "Queen's Portaits" set has now been released and can be seen here.

We have images of the Perth Congress Faststamps and will add these when there is time.
There are also some more new Machin definitives but we don't have all details or images yet.   To whet your appetites here is the first of the new high value printings - remember these haven't been printed since 2009 when they were in cylinders of 6 panes, ie 3 guttered sheets of 50.  Now the £2 has been printed in a cylinder of 12* panes/sheets of 25 stamps.
* - see comments.

With De La Rue's MA13 code, and - we're told - with no date or sheet number in the margin.  It seems that DLR still haven't got all their kit in order - or else Royal Mail have told them that this data is no longer necesssary.

UPDATE 16 May
We've been told that this stamp is now included in the High Value Definitive presentation pack The writer has withdrawn the statement.

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Freshwater Life and Butterflies stamps coming in the summer

We're now able to show you the images for two sets of stamps to be issued in the summer.   On 25 June the second set of 'Freshwater Life' Faststamps will be issued from (Wincor-Nixdorf) Post and Go machines in Post Office branches throughout the country.  

Water creatures from Lakes are, shown from upper left to lower right:
Perch, European Eel, Crucian Carp, Cadis-fly Larva, Arctic Char, Common Toad.

As usual these will be available for 6 service-indicators, with a total face value of £6.42.  At Autumn Stampex it is expected that these will be available from Hytech v2 machines.

Official First Day Postmarks (other special postmarks will be on our website)

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The 10 x 1st class Butterfly stamps will be issued on 11 July just before the National Butterfly Count campaign run by charity Butterfly Conservation.  

These are now images of the actual stamps (click on the images to see enlargements):

 Row 1: Comma, Orange Tip, Small Copper, Chalkhill Blue, Swallowtail

 Row 2: Purple Emperor, Marsh Fritillary, Brimstone, Red Admiral, Marbled White.

The 37 x 35 mm stamps will be printed in two sheets of 25/50 by Cartor Security Print in litho.  The design agency is MARCandANNA.

UPDATE MAY 2013
Royal Mail have sneaked into the programme another mixed retail stamp book: the Chalkhill blue and Comma will be issued in a self-adhesive booklet of 6 stamps with 4 x 1st class red Machin definitives which have code M13L MCIL.

A very colourful set which ought to be popular.

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Two/Three more new Machin definitive stamps for 2013

Following the issue of the Royal Mail red series of stamps on 3 January (with 2012 year codes) we reported the sale of the 1st class booklet of 6, and the 2nd class booklet of 12 with M13L codes.

As reported last week, the new tariff stamps have MA13 codes, except for the Walsall printing of the specific valued stamps which have M13L.  Apparently all should have had M13L but for some reason De La Rue used cylinders with MA13 on.

Late last week came the discover of two more M13L/MA13 stamps.  The 2nd class Business Sheet M13L was first discovered in used condition (so remember to look at all your incoming post, carefully!), and then the £1.28 sheet stamp was found from a new De La Rue MA13 printing with no date or sheet numbers.  (Thanks again to Richard P for these images.)

UPDATE: De La Rue's printing of the £1.88 has now been found, still with no sheet number or date.

Doctor Who gets more complex: Tardis has two perforations!

In an earlier report we calculated that there were 30 different stamps in the Doctor Who issue, although there is still some confusion about who printed what. 

But amongst all the confusion we dealers and collectors often forget philatelic basics - and we have to acknowledge that we were not the ones to discover that the Tardis stamps exist with two different perforations!

The stamp from the miniature sheet is perforated 14¾ x 14, whilst the one from the miniature sheet pane in the prestige stamp book is 14¾ x 15.   (The perforations of the 2nd class 'Enemies' stamps are the same from both sources.)

The difference is easy to spot without even resorting to a perforation gauge because the miniature sheet stamp has 11 holes above the elliptical one, and the pane stamp has 12.  The stamps in the Retail Booklet & Generic Smilers Sheet also have 11 holes.

Addition
Royal Mail have usually made it easy for the self-adhesive sheets and panes to be removed from the backing paper for fixing to FDCs (or even postal packets) by ensuring that the die-cut perforations are interrupted.  And this factor also demonstrates that perforators were used.

On the Miniature sheet the Tardis stamp perfs are interrupted on the end of the 3rd tooth in from the corners, on each side, except that the interruption is on the 2nd tooth from the bottom on each vertical side (8 in total).

On the PSB pane there are just four interruptions: top left and top right are on the lower side of the first tooth, lower left is on the upper side of the last tooth, and lower right is on the lower side of the last tooth.  There are no interruptions on the short side of the stamp.

Thus 3 are within the sides, and the lower right is right on the corner.  This can be seen in the images as an uneven tear of the paper, rather than a clean die-cut, most noticeable on the top of the right-hand stamp in the image.

Similar differences occur on the 2nd class stamps.  The MS has interruptions on the top of the 4th tooth on each side (hence 8 in total).  The stamps on the PSB pane have just 4 interruptions, in various positions and various sizes, on the last tooth on each vertical side (as with the Tardis).

Incidentally the size of the Tardis stamp image is different on the Retail Booklet.

The stamp design on the Retail Booklet is 17.5 x 21.5 mm but on the stamps on the Generic Sheet, Miniature Sheet, and MS pane from the PSB have images only 17 x 21 mm.

2013 New Tariff definitive stamps: De La Rue printing in Presentation Packs

Readers will recall Royal Mail's warning that delivery of the new tariff stamps to collectors would be delayed but that stamps (but not presentation packs) would be in Post Offices by the issue date.

We later found this was because of De La Rue's production difficulties associated with the move from Dunstable to Gateshead, difficulties which saw production of the 78p, 88p and £1.88 stamps sub-contracted to Walsall Security Print.  De La Rue printed the new Signed For stamps.

Now that the Presentation Packs are available, we find that that they contain stamps which are not the same as those printed by Walsall SP, which almost certainly means that they were printed by De La Rue.   How can we tell, from single stamps?  The Walsall stamps have a year code of M13L - those in the pack have a year code - like the Signed For stamps - of MA13. 

Presentation pack (with guillotined edges)

Original supplies:

We don't of course, know the printing dates for the De La Rue printings yet but will report them as soon as we do.

Meanwhile, can anybody tell us which stamps are on Royal Mail's official FDCs?

UPDATE 11 April
Thank you all for the contributions, we now know that Royal Mail's official FDCs have the De La Rue printings of all stamps.  The presentation packs were available from Friday 5th April, which ought to make that the official first day of availability of the 78p, 88p and £1.88p despite the 27 March date that will be on those covers.  

The stamps on the FDC received here are noticeably different to those in the pack. The text in the iridescent layer is noticeably 'blotchier', reminiscent of the late printings of the 2009/10 stamps.  On most values the M of MA13 is almost a rectangle of dark, with very little definition. 

The Walsall and Signed For stamps, of course, were available on 27 March, so those should be more collectable.  Anybody doing double-dated covers?

UPDATE 12 April
It is now clear that some Tallents House subscribers for single stamps are receiving De La Rue (cut) examples whilst others are receiving Walsall examples.  This may be because the DLR stock left over from producing FDCs and Presentation Packs is now all exhausted, or it may just be that the stock of singles is mixed and customers will get one or the other or a mixture.  It seems that at this stage there are no sheets of De La Rue printing available.

UPDATE 9 May
De La Rue sheet printings are now appearing in post office branches.  The £1.88 (and £1.28 MA13) were reported in mid-April, the 88p (and £2 MA13) at the end of the month.

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End of Packets and Standard Parcel Post service means more Horizon Labels to collect

Yesterday's change to postal tariffs meant little to ordinary users of the letter post, but those who send small and larger packets now find that the Packet and Parcel Post services have changed with some very high increases for bulky lightweight packets.  This is because transportation costs vary by volume more than by weight.  1 kg packet that was £3.50 last week is £5.20 this week if over the size limits for a small parcel.  (More on Royal Mail's website.)


Letters are now confined to ordinary and Large Letters (1L, 1LL, 2LL) and the 1PK. 2PK, and SP codes have been replaced by 1SP, 2SP, 1MP, and 2MP codes for small and medium parcels.  As the size-based-prices system also applies to British Forces mail corresponding indicators of BSP and BMP were also introduced.

Here are examples of some of the new indicators, including examples on white labels so that they can be seen more easily.  As usual the changes exist in both English and bi-lingual versions.  More on this website, where they are also for sale.

M12L high value Machin definitive stamps WERE printed on 25/01/12

The 2011 new tariff stamps included 76p, £1.10 and £1.65 printed side-by-side on a single 3-value cylinder, with a 68p printed in three columns on a single-value cylinder.  (The stamps are shown on our website.)

Further printings took place through the year including 10/01/12 all with the M11L year code.

Later in the year, it became obvious that Royal Mail would not be able to change postage rates again at the end of March 2012, and that the announcement of new rates and implementation of the change would be delayed. A further printing of the much used 76p (airmail letters outside Europe 10g and worldwide postcards) was necessary.

This printing took place on 25/01/12 but despite the fact that the grid showed this to be a 3-value printing (as above), the £1.10 and £1.65 values were apparently not placed on sale at post office branches, and they were never on the date/cylinder list provided to dealers by Royal Mail Tallents House.

However we have now been sent a scan of the two values from that printing.  Sheets from this printing are not, as far as we know, in the hands of any collectors or dealers**, although it has been suggested that they may have been obtainable from Royal Mail's online shop.  However, as the values ceased to be available there with effect from the introduction of the new tariff when they were replaced by the £1.28 and £1.90 values, I find this hard to believe. 

These sheet numbers (007319-) are higher than the ones we have in stock for the 76p (0039977) so a considerable number of sheets were printed.

It made economic sense to continue to use the D1 cylinders even if a new iridescent M12L cylinder was needed, even if it meant some stamps would never be sold.  (Indeed if what we now know was correct then, that the year code depends on when the contract was placed, which would explain why the 10/01/12 printing had the M11L code.)

But if these stamps from this printing were made available to anybody, then they should have been made available to everybody.  If they were sold from Royal Mail Direct (in Edinburgh) then they should have been available from the Philatelic Service (in Edinburgh).  After all, the Philatelic Service stands to profit from sale of stamps which won't be used, so it makes much more sense for Royal Mail to sell them to collectors.  The gap between the left hand and the right hand seems to be one into which any number of stamp printings could fall.

If anybody does hear of the £1.10 and £1.65 M12L stamps existing with collectors or dealers we would be delighted to know more, and we would protect our sources as always.  Do let us know.

**And note: we do not have any of these; and to the people who read about them here and then go to Richard P in Norwich as their usual supplier, he doesn't have any either!

Following the comment regarding scans of the iridescent code on the above, I'm adding the 76p image which we know came from the same date's printing.  The iridescent cylinder is one cylinder across all three columns so they must all be M12L.

(To wrap up the story so far, eventually an extra single-value printing of the 76p from cylinder D2 was made on 30/03/12.)