You know stamp collecting is getting expensive even for the day-to-day issues! Today, you'd have to fork out £19.24 to get the new Machin issues and the eight new Regionals. And another 45p for the Philatelic Bureau (which is pretty good value and a lot less than the petrol in running around trying to find a Post Office with any of these!)
Five more values that will make you smile or grimace in years to come when you may be showing your collection to someone and they ask 'Why did they have a special stamp for £1.57?' You may try to suggest that it was the second class rate for 70g to Kazahkstan. Not signed for.
As well as the codes M17L and their all being self-adhesive, I should also mention that two are prime numbers if you ignore the decimal.
We also get two new Regionals for each nation in the £1.17 and £1.40 denominations. Regions don't get self adhesives - people living there have to lick these. You'll see that the fonts for the value tablets have now been standardised and look very similar to the national font, I had often wondered, including out loud here from time to time, why on Earth each region had their own font.
The designs and colours look very much as they have done since 1999 with a small change in 2003 to give us the white borders. It is strange to think that the first time we saw the Scottish 'tartan' design, for instance, was as a 64p stamp!
This series has now lasted longer than many others have done and whilst it isn't about to break any records it is non the less a lot longer than ever I would have imagined. The designs really did not seem to have any particular longevity about them but, along with flags, lions, dragons, leeks, hexagonal basalt and green fields they have indeed lasted.
