Post and Go News: Postal Museum, Guernsey, Jersey, and others

Press Release:

Change of Overprint and New Post and Go Stamps at The Postal Museum

LONDON, 16 August 2017 – The Postal Museum has announced today that its ‘Official Opening’ inscription will end on all designs on Tuesday 12 September. It will be replaced with the words ‘The Postal Museum’ (without the organisation’s envelope logo) across all designs the following day, Wednesday 13 September.

Coinciding with the first day of Stampex, there will also be changes to the designs available from The Postal Museum’s A0001 machine. Royal Mail Heritage: Mail by Air (six designs – first class only) will replace the Union Flag (all values), which will no longer be available.

The following stamps will be on sale from Wednesday 13 September:

• Royal Mail Heritage: Mail by Air (six designs – first class only)
• Machin 50 Commemoratives (six designs - 1^st class only)
• Machin (2^nd Class only)
• Underground Railway (all values)
• Mail Coach (all values)

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Inscription Errors for Guernsey Visiting Liners

GM from Jersey writes:

The uptake on the current visiting cruise ship issues from Guernsey has not been great. My agent over there has picked up errors in the spelling of the ships names, most recently Sliver Spirit  instead of Silver Spirit, which was spotted and corrected on the day.  [See below §]


He also writes about various errors on Jersey Post and Go stamps, including

combinations of blank and correct printings

Battle of Hastings underprint with sword but no descriptive lettering.

half printed underprint lettering due to slipping within the roll of  stamps

error, underprint RAFA on endangered species issues.

Is Post and Go worthwhile for Jersey?  Apparently only if collectors buy the stamps, as GM also reports:

JE02  is very little used except by me. For example I have experienced the session numbers increase by only 1 or 2 over a period of 10 days!

For more on the dubious output of Jersey's Philatelic Bureau and that of the Isle of Man, take a look at the Commonwealth Stamps Opinion Blog.

§ I've had a response from the Head of Philatelic at Guernsey Post in response to the comments.

a. The error of Sliver for Silver is the only error that has been reported and was corrected on the same day.

b. "the uptake among the audience for which the products were primarily intended - cruise ship passengers -  were healthy and we are delighted to have supported the Visit Guernsey initiative by offering Post & Go products to passengers"

I'm happy to publish this response from Guernsey.
 

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The National Museum of the Royal Navy

Kiosk A002 in Portsmouth will have the following inscriptions starting Saturday 19 August and ending 18 September to celebrate the arrival of the HMS Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth.

Union Flag

Royal Navy

QEII Carrier 2017

Machin

Royal Navy

Queen Elizabeth II Carrier 2017

These stamps can only be obtained from the Museum.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Chris for sending these images:

UPDATE:
As noted by the anonymous contributor, the inscription on these is incorrect as the carrier is actually HMS Queen Elizabeth - don't be surprised if there are changes here!

UPDATE 25 August
We have now been told that the inscriptions have changed to correct this error: I'm trying to find out when it changed.  But it was not changed until 1020 on 29 August!

Thanks to Chris H we can now show the stamps with the corrected inscription and receipt:

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As before, we will not be stocking these Post and Go stamps.  An announcement about Autumn Stampex will be made shortly.

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Before we go, one more Machin business sheet

Before we venture west to the highlands (well, the Welsh Marches) we had the local club's Summer Fair.  Nowadays I don't look for many stamps, but I do look for modern British postal history, which I write up on the other blog here.

This is the best find for many years, an insured parcel to South Africa franked at £3.35.  Read the postal history blog to find out whether this was right, and why.

I was also told of another find in a local post office, the 1st class business sheet with M17L coding.  Printed on 22/02/2017 this is on SBP2 of course, and will be added to our webshop for purchase on our return.

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Summer Break

Now that the school holidays are here we are taking a summer break, and our office will be closed from 4 August for approximately 3 weeks, reopening 24/29 August (Public holiday 28th). 

As most of the Machin definitives for this year have now appeared and been offered on our shop, the shop will also be closed for this period.  In the past (apart from last year's long break) we have allowed orders to be placed which results in a big backlog on our return.  After the June break a customer in the USA responded to the despatch email with a comment that he was about to cancel the order as he had not heard from us - which goes to show that not everybody reads the order akcnowledgement email (in which we clearly said that we were away for 2 weeks)!

We will be out of wifi and telephone contact for much of the time - one of the pleasures of being in a rural valley in the sparsely-populated Welsh borderlands. 

Emails and blog comments which have not been processed by 2G-mobile or dodgy internet-café connection will be dealt with on our return.

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Norfolk and Norwich PS Summer Fair 5 August 2017

If you are visiting Norfolk this weekend you will be welcome at the Norfolk and Norwich Philatelic Society Summer Stamp Fair.

Click here for map

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The new national Postal Museum has opened!

In 1998 we lost the National Postal Museum at London's King Edward Building.  After some years in the wilderness the limited-scope British Postal Museum and Archive opened, was nearly relocated to Swindon, but today the totally new Postal Museum is open to the public.  For some reason they chose not to use the original title, although that would have made sense as the country has at least one other postal museum, in Bath.

Thanks to Chris we can show one of the first day covers sold to mark the opening, bearing the five different Post and Go stamps available, with the various additional inscriptions - some with the year and some without.  Note that although 28 July is the official opening day, the Post and Go machine was available on 25 July to enable collectors and dealers to buy their stamps in advance of the very busy opening day.  The first day cover is therefore dates 25 July - and the stamps are cancelled with the new Postal Museum permanent postmark.

Coincidentally, as Bath played such a dominant role in developing the nation's postal service, Nick has sent a scan of a slogan postmark applied yesterday for delivery today, which marks the opening of the new Postal Museum.  This is from Bath and is cancelled at the Bristol Mail Centre covering Bath, Bristol, Gloucester and Taunton postcode areas.  (I'll add this to the July slogan post as well, for completeness.)

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New inscription makes a mess of FAAM Post and Go.

As reported last month Post and Go machine A003 at The Fleet Air Arm Museum, based at RNAS Yeovilton Somerset, has been adapted to provide additional inscriptions in association with a new exhibition entitled ‘Cold War to Kabul’.

According to the IAR website, the kiosk will print ‘ZA298’ onto the Machin design and ‘ZD433’ onto the Union Jack design - referring to the Sea King HC4 (ZA298) and Harrier GR9 (ZD433) at the exhibition.

Unexpectedly, the additional printing also identifies the aircraft - which doesn't seem unreasonable until you see what a mess it makes of the stamps!   There simply is not enough room to accommodate so much additional text on the Flag stamp, and on the Machin the extended inscription overlaps the museum logo and includes the word 'Junglie'.

These are most unattractive and demonstrate that you can do just too much to a stamp by way of customising it.   Unless properly catalogued - and I'm sure Stuart Leigh will add them to his lists soon - in years to come collectors might even imagine that this is a private additional overprint, and a reject at that!

Thanks to RS for the pictures.

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Alert for Hotmail, Orange, Wanadoo, Freeserve, etc email users.

I see from a newsletter received from a US dealer that the cessation of Hotmail addresses is proceeding quickly - he has trouble getting any Hotmail emails from outside, and from some within, the USA.  This is because Microsoft no longer authenticate those addresses as valid.

If you have an email service with any of these providers

• Orange.net
• Orangehome.co.uk
• Wanadoo.co.uk
• Freeserve.co.uk
• Fsbusiness.co.uk
• Fslife.co.uk 
• Fsmail.net
• Fsworld.co.uk
• Fsnet.co.uk 
• Hotmail
• Verizon
• btinernet
• btopenworld
• btocnnect

please read the detailed information provided in the post we made on 5 May.

We understand that Yahoo has recently been bought, so Yahoo addresses may not be the best ones to move to - gmail looks a safe bet, or your own domain.

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Philatelic Bulletins wanted by US collector.

As a result problems with Royal Mail's accounting systems, it took one of our US customers six months to renew his subscription to the Philatelic Bulletin.  

He is trying to get the back numbers from Royal Mail but if anybody has duplicates or unwanted copies of these editions, he would be interested in acquiring them.

October 2016 - June 2017 inclusive

Please let me know by email (ian@norphil.co.uk) and I will put you in touch with each other.

Many thanks.

UPDATE 20 JULY
Arrangements have been made with one of our UK customers to send the required Bulletins to the customer in the USA.  Many thanks to him, and to others who have made offers or sent individual Bulletins.  These will be passed on to other collectors.

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New stamps in short supply - further stocks awaited

As many of our customers have noted, we are out of stock - already - of several of the most recently discovered stamp booklets.

We are currently out of  these booklets and have very few (if any) stamps to sell as singles:

RB 6.7 -  1st Large x 4 booklet M17L
ME 7a.7 - 2nd x 12 booklet M17L
MB18a.7 - 1st x 6 Padlock booklet M17L
MF 9a.7 - 1st x 12 booklet M17L
MB18a - 1st x 6 Padlock M16L SBP2 - back in stock, as is 2936a.6a, but not for long.

Some of these were found in supermarkets (supplied by Royal Mail), and some in Post Offices (supplied by Post Office Ltd Supplies Dept).   In both cases subsequent supplies have been of earlier stamps.  Similarly, old stocks of business sheets are still being delivered (a 2014 printing of the 1st Large is now available in our local crown office).

More stocks are being sort and when we visit the west of the country soon we may find some more - or they may have stamps that are older still!

Stocks will be made available as soon as we are able.

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Stanley Gibbons' 2017 Great Britain Concise Catalogue now published.

After a delay of more than six weeks from its originally forecast publication date the SG

Concise has now reached us, with a few surprises.

The first surprise was that the delay was not to allow the editors to incorporate the Machin 50th Anniversary stamps issued a week after the original publication date and available to dealers 2-4 weeks earlier.  On reflection, though, and considering all the problems I and our reader-contributors had working out what was new and what wasn't, and of those that were new which would warrant full catalogue status, it makes sense for the editors to wait until they and their advisors had had plenty of time to study the stamps themselves.

There are some welcome changes in this edition.  The stamp subject index in the introductory pages have had a make-over.  Somebody has done a lot of work and the decimal index is now in several different forms, including not only the subject but for miniature sheets, alphabetically by title, alphabetically by stamp within the sheet, and numerically by SG number.  Regional stamps included in MS are also included.  Unfortunately the alphabetical list has been sorted using a computer programme, and hence numbers and quotes are taken into account.  This extract shows the order in which these stamps are listed:

'Address your letters Plainly' - Classic GPO Posters
'Now run along....' - Illustrations from The Tale of Peter Rabbit 
"Cat" - Edward Lear
"FAIR" - The Weather
15th Infantry Regiment - Soldiers and Battle of Waterloo Map
1971 decimal coin - Diamond Jubilee of QEII
A Colour Box - - Films by GPO Film Unit
........etc through to ZLS.

I think the quotes, and the definite and indefinite articles ('a', 'an' and 'the') should have been ignored.

Whether this is sufficient to satisfy thematic collectors remains to be seen; including the new 2015 Smilers designs (SG MS3678) by the name of the design team seems very odd.  The 'Dad' stamp, 3677, is not listed in any of the lists as far as I can see (even under the generic heading 'Smilers' which is also absent) even though it exists as a single stamp, outside the MS.

In the introduction the editor provides justification for the listing of the £5 Accession anniversary stamp: in fact his justification has become unnecessary as all Post Office branches have been able (but few are willing) to order this stamp by entering the product order code.  A major addition to the listings is the 5½p Wales definitive with a lower setting of the dragon and value, which makes its appearance as W21b, priced at £350 mint, £100 used.

The original selling price of No Value Indicated (NVI) stamps continues in the introduction, but I

think it is a pity that the listing of international stamps is confined to the stamps denominated with the letter 'E' and excludes all those showing a weight and the airmail postcard stamp (SG2357a-9).  It also excludes all airmail Post and Go stamps.  I think it would be useful to show the original selling price of all these in a table which would, therefore, also show the current postage value of those stamps.
     The 'E' stamps were sold at a value of 30p - 40p over six years but are now worth £1.17 as postage. Inclusion of this information would help explain why the 'Fashion Hats' 'E' stamp is listed at £2 mint, while the 'higher' value of 45p is listed at £1.60 (though it doesn't explain why the 65p stamp is listed at £2.50).

As usual the introduction includes a list of the catalogue numbers new stamps added (aside from new issues) but on this occasion omits to mention number changes.   Within the Security Machins area of interest the 1st class gummed Diamond Jubilee stamp from the prestige book (Norvic 3328) has been moved from the main commemorative area to the Machin listings, changing from 3328 to U3279.  With U3012, the 5p from PSBs, included as the lowest value in the Beatrix Potter book, the pane that it is in has been numbered U3012d.  This has required the Enschede Merchant Navy 5p with elliptical perforation inverted to be renumbered from U3012d to U3102g.  I have not noticed any other re-numbers of individual security stamps.

Stamps printed on both types Security-printed Backing Paper (SBP) are now listed in John Deering's tables although those stamps which exist both with and without, or with SBP1 and SBP2 are not given full catalogue listing as individual stamps.  However in the booklet listings, not only are booklets with SBP separately numbered, but if they are first issued with SBP1, those with SBP2 have been allocated a sub-number.

Post and Go stamps listings have been given a major makeover seemingly out of proportion to the number of people now interested, although the introduction warns that "as these machines become ever more ubiquitous... we have had to draw a line and limit the tables to those categories already established."   This is in line with the suggestion of John Deering in Gibbons Stamp Monthly (with which I disagreed) last year, in which he claimed that the transport museums (and hence the Shakespeare Centre) were not as worthy as the Armed Forces Museums because of the latter's close association with The Queen.  I'll leave others to review the new listings and tables (and I am happy to publish a guest-blog on that subject!

As usual the Concise is essential reading for those who want to keep up to date and know what Gibbons and other dealers are using as their main reference and price guide.  I'll leave readers to decide whether the prices reflect the market: I suspect for the U-series Machins those prices will not be far ahead - or behind - the market!

The latest edition of the Norvic Machin Security Checklist (v1.6.1) is now available for download.

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