At least they didn't change the shape of the box,.

As readers have provided details of 'special' post boxes ever since the 2012 Olympics, with specials for Dickens in Rochester, and others around the country, I am sharing this press release from Royal Mail about its newly decorated post boxes.

11 February 2019
As the nation prepares to send their Valentine’s Day cards and love letters, Royal Mail unveils four ‘romantic’ postboxes across the UK, which honour the life and works of some of Britain’s greatest writers on love.

The postboxes are adorned in quotes from some of the best-loved work of romantic poets and authors John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Anna Seward and Robert Burns, and are located close to places of significance to the writers*. They will be in place for a month.

It is hoped that the four boxes encourage lovelorn wordsmiths to send their own literary masterpieces in the form of love letters and Valentine’s Day cards this year.

Mark Street, Head of Campaigns at Royal Mail said: “As one of the guardians of the written word, we relish the opportunity to celebrate the life and times of some of Britain’s most treasured writers. With such a rich history of producing some of the most famous romantic works of all time, it seems only fitting that their work is honoured on some of our iconic postboxes.”

Rob Shakespeare, Principal Curator, Keats House said: “Keats’s letters are some of the best known in the English language, and his letters to Fanny Brawne are particularly touching.  None of her letters to Keats survived and the last ones were unopened and buried with him in Rome so, rather poignantly, we know how he wrote to her, but we won’t ever know how she expressed her feelings for him.

This year marks the 200^th anniversary of this romance, captured forever in his tenderly worded love letters.”

*The postboxes are situated in the following locations:

• John Keats (London): North End Way, London, NW3 7HA (on Hampstead Heath). Keats lived in Hampstead for much of his life.

• Anna Seward (Lichfield): Conduit Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire, WS13 6JR. Anna lived in Lichfield for much of her life.

• Thomas Hardy (Dorset): Cuckoo Lane, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, DT2 8QJ (close to Hardy’s Cottage).

• Robert Burns (Ayr): Murdoch’s Lone, Alloway, Ayr, KA7 4PQ (Close to Burns’ Birthplace Museum). Burns was born in Ayr.

UPDATE 12 February
Thanks to several readers I can now show pictures (provided by Royal Mail) of three of the boxes which I couldn't find on their media page.

 

 Putting the finishing touches to a postbox decorated in honour of author Thomas Hardy in his birthplace of Higher Bockhampton, Dorset Credit: Royal Mail

 

Postbox honouring poet Anna Seward in her hometown of Lichfield, Staffordshire Credit: Royal Mail

 

 

Actors from Keats House Museum with a postbox decorated by Royal Mail in honour of poet John Keats in Hampstead Heath, London Photo: Royal Mail  

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Some old comments will soon disappear

Google has announced the end of Google +.  This won’t affect many people because the reason for closure is that there are too few users. 

However, ALL past comments made on blogs by readers using Google + accounts will be removed when Google + closes.  This may mean that some comment threads have gaps in: there is nothing we can do about this.

Google statement:

30 January 2019

In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and the challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and would like to provide the next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.

What will happen to Google+ comments on Blogger and other sites?

Blogger and other sites may use Google+ for their commenting system. Comments on blogs may also exist as posts or comments on Google+. This feature will be removed from Blogger by 4 February and from other sites by 7 March. All your Google+ comments on all sites will be deleted starting on 2 April 2019. You can download and save these comments.

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Leonardo da Vinci: 500th Anniversary of Death

Royal Mail will issue a set of 12 stamps and a Prestige Stamp Book on 13 February 2019, coinciding with London's Spring Stampex.


Leonardo da Vinci is a world subject and one of the greatest collections of his work is owned by Her Majesty the Queen within the Royal Collection Trust, housed in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle and some of his finest works housed within the Royal Collection will be reproduced on stamps.

On the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci 144 of his finest drawings from Royal Collection Trust are being displayed during 2019 at 12 museums and galleries across the United Kingdom. Each of 12 locations will have an exhibition of 12 of these drawings from 1 Feb – 6 May 2019, before all coming together for an exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, London. The twelve Special Stamps in this set feature a selection of his drawings from the collection acquired for the Royal Collection by King Charles II around 1670.

Royal Collection Trust is a registered charity which looks after the Royal Collection and manages the public opening of the official residences of Her Majesty The Queen.  The full collection of around 600 of his drawings housed in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle is among the most important in the world, and has been pre-eminent in the study of Leonardo for centuries.

 

The stamps depict:

The skull sectioned;  A sprig of guelder-rose;   Studies of cats;  A star-of-Bethlehem and other plants;  The anatomy of the shoulder and foot;  The head of Leda;
The head of a bearded man;  The skeleton;  The head of St Philip;  A woman in a landscape;  A design for an equestrian monument;  The fall of light on a face.

More detail about each of the sketches on the stamps on the Post Office website.

Technical details:
The stamps are designed by Kate Stephens
All images by Leonardo da Vinci: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019.
Printed by International Security Printers in lithography the 35 mm square stamps are printed in two sheets of 30/60 each containing 5 columns of 6 designs.
Other products available from Royal Mail: presentation pack, stamp cards, first day covers, press sheet.
The original issue date of 12 February 2019 is printed in the margin, but the correct date is 13th. No reprints were made and all stocks have the 'wrong' date.

Prestige Stamp Book.  This PSB marks a new premium charged by Royal Mail, being £1.46 over the face value of the stamps, at a price of £13.10 against £11.64.  With 12 stamps the need to make unusual arrangements on the panes is unnecessary, the stamps being spread over the three panes as shown below.  

 

 

As always, click on the images to see then enlarged.

The arrangement of the stamps in the panes is, of course, different to that in the two counter sheets, thus permitting collection - should one so wish - of multiple combinations of se-tenant stamps.

The definitive pane contains two each of the 5p, 10p and £1.55 values with source code MPIL and year code M18L.  These are listed in our shop as 4155P.8 for the set of 3.

We also have a few first day covers (same product code on our shop) cancelled with a Windsor postmark showing a portrait of the artist.

I also found an earlier Royal Mail (or GPO) commemoration of a Leonardo exibition, from 1962.

The postmark slogan, from Battersea SW11, 14 July 1962 reads
LEONARDO
       CARTOON
   EXHIBITION
  NATIONAL
            GALLERY

UPDATE 14 February
Comment from Malcolm: I received my PSB from the Bureau yesterday and it has 2 copies of the 1st commemorative pane of 4 included.

 

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February slogan postmarks

My thanks to BM for the first of this month's slogans.  Other slogans in different forms (and any other unusual postmarks) will be added in due course.

Bicentenary of the birth of John Ruskin, Victorian Art Critic, used at South East Anglia on 5 February 2019.  As the anniversary marked is 9 February (why '09' in the postmark?), one can assume that this will run for a few days but no others have been reported yet.

Victorian art critic

John Ruskin

Born 200 years ago

09 February 2019

Thanks to KC for the alternative layout from Swindon Mail Centre, with the more usual date format.

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UPDATE 9 FEBRUARY
What may be only the start of Royal Mail's Valentine's Day campaign dropped on Norvic Towers doormat today, from Peterborough Mail Centre dated 7 Feburary 2019.

"Whatever our souls are

made of, his and mine

are the same"

- Emily Bronte

Happy Valentine's Day!

UPDATE 12 February
A different slogan has now appeared from Chester & N Wales MC on 8 February 2019

Happy

Valentines

Day!

Update 14 February
Scans from MB show that both these slogans were still in operation on 12th and maybe 13th February (2nd image).
Emily Bronte from Edinburgh, unnecessarily on a contract mail envelope 12-02-2019
Happy Valentines Day from North West Midlands, possibly 13/02/2019, overlaying Edinburgh Bronte.
Clearer Valentines from NW Midlands on 12/02/2019.

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Douglas Myall, Machin Stamps Expert - 1922-2019 RIP

From the Deegam.com website

Douglas Myall

"We are very sad to report that Douglas Myall passed away on 30 January 2019. He was known affectionately to his thousands of followers in the philatelic world simply as Deegam or DGAM.

Born in Essex on 17 December 1922, Douglas George Albert Myall worked as a British civil servant. His career took him to the office of the Inspector of Foreign Dividends where he developed his interest in philately by collecting the stamps from incoming mail. He subsequently moved to the trademarks registry at the Patents Office. For some years after retirement, he travelled extensively acting as a consultant and adviser on trademark and patent law.

In the 1950s and 1960s, he collected Wilding stamps, the first definitive issues of HM Queen Elizabeth’s reign. At the same time, his work required him to study security printing which helped him in his philatelic activities. His first articles began appearing in the philatelic press.

From their introduction in 1967, he studied and collected Machins, the definitive stamps carrying The Queen’s head designed by Arnold Machin. Soon after Britain adopted decimalised currency in February 1971, DGAM (with three other eminent philatelists) founded two Study Circles, the aims of which were to promote the collection and study of modern philately. The two bodies were the Great Britain Decimal Stamp Book Study Circle (GB DSB SC) and the British Decimal Stamps Study Circle (BDSSC). These two later combined to become the Modern British Philatelic Circle which continues to flourish today with a membership of over 550 people world-wide.

DGAM was the founding Editor of GB DSB SC. He devised many of the nomenclatures to describe the books’ characteristics and these nomenclatures are today’s accepted international standards.

He was a prolific writer for the British Philatelic Bulletin and was been voted ‘Favourite Bulletin author’ in a poll of the readers in most of the years that the polls were held. He managed to translate his deep knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject into articles which have a wide topical interest.

As well as writing for the Circles’ publication and the Philatelic Bulletin, he wrote and published many articles for a wide variety of publications including The GB Journal of the Great Britain Philatelic Society and Stamp Collecting magazine. These complemented his own personal publications.

During his studies, he was not content with the way that established catalogues were handling the potential criteria to study Machin stamps. In the end, he decided to write his own reference work, with an aspiration to be as exhaustive and precise as possible.

To many, his greatest achievement has been the writing and publishing of The Complete Deegam Machin Handbook, which details all aspects and features of the Machin issues and is universally accepted as the ‘bible’ on the subject. First published in 1993, a second and a third edition followed. The latter, in July 2003, contained 1,272 pages. This renowned work received accolades from far and wide. Amongst the awards given for this work have been the National Postal Museum medal for research (1997); Gold Medal at ChicagoPex (1997); Silver Gilt medal, Stampex (1997); Vermeil, Palmerston, New Zealand (1997); Gold medal, Korpex 2000.

The present electronic edition, available on CD-ROM only, first arrived on the scene in April 2010. The files are regularly updated every eight weeks or so. The issued version is thus always current. Companion Deegam Reports are made available to subscribers.

Aside from the Machins, Douglas collected British perfins on covers. Outside of philately, he was interested in photography and, in particular, the macro photography of insects. Some of his trips abroad provided some fascinating subjects!

He was very much a family man and shared most of his adult life with his wife, Kath, who died in 2014. They had two daughters, Delia and Fiona, and they and their families were Douglas’s greatest interests. He will be sorely missed."

oooOooo

"As Douglas wished, the Deegam project will continue."

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No more 'City of Inverness' universals postmarks now the city has a new mail centre ?

Inverness mail centre is going fully automated after moving to a new £6.6m unit

The last mail centre in the country to manually sort its post has been brought into the 21st  century.

Inverness mail centre transferred into new premises, three times the size of its old base, in time for Christmas. The extra space means colleagues can work more efficiently, deal with higher mail volumes and offer a better service to customers.

The previous office was cramped so couldn’t accommodate machinery, and lorries struggled to make deliveries. But colleagues are getting to grips with equipment such as Compact Sequence Sorting (CSS) machines and an Intelligent Letter Sorting Machine (ILSM) is being installed next month.

Jonathan Wilson, operator, said: ‘In terms of the job, personally, it’s easier. In terms of getting to work, it’s a little bit more out of the way. I think everyone’s finding their feet and long-term it will absolutely be better.’

Steve Wiseman, project manager, is confident that with the extra space, Inverness will soon be hitting its quality targets. ‘Automation really does give the plant capability,’ he said.

Shona Cameron, people change manager, added: ‘It’s going to change working processes across the Highlands and Islands with a positive impact on delivery units with the introduction of sequencing.’
The investment in the unit is already paying off, demonstrated by 2018’s ‘fantastic’ Christmas.

David Noble, plant manager, said: ‘For the first time it was a much more modern operation. Putting 200,000 letters a night through sorting machines makes a real difference.’

Benefits for customers include a revamped customer service point and on-site parking. The team’s ability to handle more parcels is another boost for local customers.   ‘There’s a massive reliance on Royal Mail here because customers can’t just pop out to shops,’ added David. ‘We get the second largest volume of Amazon Direct parcels in the country.’

Process relocated in November and will be followed by Delivery, Collections and admin functions in March.

From My RoyalMail

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More new M18L Machins!

You thought that it was all over, well it isn't!

Thanks to the anonymous person who added a comment to another post to the effect that the 2nd class book of 12 (stamps coded MTIL) from 2018 (M18L) have been found printed on SBP1 cover paper.

These are on eBay (1 left as I write) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/352577066756.  I'm sure the seller won't object to the image appearing here.  I'll try to get one that shows the MTIL clearly, and it will be added to our shop as soon as we can get some.  The number in our catalogue will be 2931.8a.

 

A further printing of the 20p counter sheet, 28/08/18, is different to the other two 20p printings; this will be added to our shop shortly, with number 3020.8b.

Original printing 09/02/18 - yellow phosphor;

Second printing 08/05/18 - blue phosphor, yellow fluorescence to the iridescent ink;

Third printing 28/08/18 - blue phosphor only.

 

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New on our web shop

Whilst stocktaking we found that some stamps had not been listed on our web shop, or had been removed in error.  So here are a few special offers and new listings available now.  Some are in small numbers, so buy now!


3626A - World War I set (2 complete PSB panes incl SG 3629A) from 2014 PSB with all over phosphor on all stamps - 25% off.

3844A - World War I 2016 complete pane of Post Office Rifles stamps

3958a/61a - Machin 50th anniversary 2017 pair of PSB panes with set of six embossed stamps - 11% off.

SG 4067-70 - Red Arrows prestige book pane complete with 4 stamps - 50p off.

More to follow!

And thanks to Scott for spotting this on the blog's page-view count

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Forgeries masquerading as 'used for research' stamps in online auction offers.

I have frequently reported on Machin definitive stamps which appeared to be, or definitely were, forgeries.  And at the end of November I reproduced the press release from the Charity Commission suggesting that charities should not be selling kiloware because it could enable people to mine the sacks for uncancelled stamps which could be resold for reuse.

If you've looked at GB stamps on eBay you have probably seen the occasional (or many!) offers for used but uncancelled stamps which are being sold - either "for philatelic research and not reuse" or without that caveat, or affixed to supplies of envelopes for reuse.  And there was the prosecution of a couple for laundering stamps and reselling them for reuse.

Recently I was shown a selection of forgeries available online.

But there are others who don't go to that trouble as shown in the pictures here.   This sheetlet of 25 1st class country definitives (including, bizarrely, the Welsh flag stamp) look reasonable, but why are they on the same sheet of glossy backing paper?  Because they are self-adhesive!

Of course the only time they were issued as self-adhesive was in Smilers/Generic sheets - but not with that font.  All - except the centre column - have the denomination in the new 2018 font.

Once they are affixed to an envelope, or package, would anybody notice that they were not quite right?  Probably not.  They are apparently printed in larger sheets because the right-hand edge has the impression of die-cut perforations: it seems that the stamps were printed at least 11 stamps wide, and one column was removed before being cut into sheetlets of 25.

Of course if you wanted to send parcels a higher denomination would be useful:

On the right, the original £5 from 1977.  On the left, the 2017 Accession commemoration with a paler head, and iridescent printing.  In the centre, a self-adhesive version of the Accession stamp with the original type of head, but also with iridescent printing.  In the picture below the 2017 and self-adhesive stamps are reversed - and you can certainly see the iridescent printing, or however it is created.

If it is smaller packets, not needing a £5 stamp, then how about some more country definitives, the £1 or £1.05 - and they'll do for letters to Europe as well.

In all cases the stamps on paper are unused self-adhesive forgeries, the others are genuine with ordinary gum.   Notice the very poor colour matching, and the reversed-out value on the Scotland stamps, instead of it being in silver.

What's very odd is the England stamps.  Can the genuine colour be so hard to reproduce?  Or have the forgers been given some Royal Mail publicity images to colour match.  Those are the stamps which really stand out as being 'wrong'.  These images below are just two of the colour error pictures that Royal Mail sent out or published in their Philatelic Bulletin.

2nd class stamps have also been forged - again, self-adhesive, with new font denominations.

Earlier I showed some Christmas forgeries, including this one which was too small.

And there are others - these have entirely the wrong (die-cut) perforation, compare the genuine (on the left) in the lower picture:

 

There are so many questions.

Would a user of stamps recognise any of these as being forgeries?  Probably not.

Would Royal Mail Revenue Protection (RP) recognise any of them - aside from the fact that there are no phosphor bands - or even imitation ones?   On non-machineable packets they would probably not be flagged up to RP anyway.

When I was first shown these I asked the question that brought the answer that is the title of this post.  Why on earth would forgers produce such a wide range of stamps?  Different values yet, but why all the different stamps?  It could only be so that they could be sold as previously used.   As it states in the eBay description:

 

Royal Mail really do have a problem, and not just with laundering of pre-used stamps!

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Walsall phosphor and fluorescence variations, continued.

I've reported at length (most recently here) on the phosphor and fluorescence variations on counter sheets printed by ISP Walsall, and similar variations on booklets have also been noted, some going back many years.

It comes as no surprise that the same sort of variations occur on Walsall-printed business sheet stamps.  These are much more difficult to find because they require the purchase of whole sheets (of 100 small stamps or 50 large letter): if the stamps turn out to be the same then that expenditure - by collector or dealer - is wasted as few people have an outlet for that many spare stamps.

I've recently been shown examples of the small stamp sheets from 2018 and can now show variations between two printings of each value.

2nd class - printed 14/03/18 and 23/04/18.  Phosphor is blue, but on the later date the iridescent ink has yellow fluorescence.

1st class - printed 01/03/18 and 17/04/18.  As above, the phosphor is blue, and the iridescent ink has yellow fluorescence.

These will be listed in the next edition of our Machin Checklist, but we will not be able to supply them.  For the record, the ones we have already supplied are of the first type, with blue phosphor only.

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