78, 88, 1.88P DLR CHANGE. Well, not exactly.

You have every right to be confused by the 78p, 88p and £1.88 issues, with another set arriving from Tallents House this morning! Not to mention the strange use of P in RM's despatch note. (Unless, that is, I have missed something and there is a new 1.88p denomination!!)

The story so far: These new denominations were due on counters on 27 March 2013 but De La Rue happened to be moving away from Dunstable at the time and no-one can blame them for that. Walsall did the honours and ensured counters had the pink, yellow and blue supplies.

Philatelic Bureau customers will have received these at that time too and DLR also produced some coil strips with all the values which Tallents House staff guillotined for things like FDCs and some may even have slipped into singles orders! They will have clear cut borders.

Eventually DLR got going again and their counter sheets became available and these are now being distributed to Bureau customers (although some have been available since May!) They can be distinguished by the rouletted edges on the backing paper. Now, that may look the same as Walsall's could be in your mind but if you read my previous posts you would have realised that the Walsall stamps have the code M13L and the DLR have MA13.

The 78p referred to in my previous post will be one of the new DLRs - that supplier has yet to come up with the 88p and £1.88 or maybe has lost the will to look any further. I like all this - it is what makes collecting fun, interesting and one or other of these items may prove to be just scarce enough to make it all worthwhile for our children's children's children when they look through the collections in some distant future.

I am now waiting for the minor variations in these issues to appear! Apart from the NVIs, there seem precious few really good varieties nowadays.

You should also be aware that the 20p has appeared with the Code 13 in sheets too. Before long, I think we shall need a catalogue listing the Year and which definitives were issued in it rather than my ridiculously long and confusing lists which show the value and, if you search long enough, the Codes available. I may have to work on that. If anyone does have a ready-made list, however, and can save me the work, do send me the link. Credit will, of course be given!