Back to that 81p

Well, if the many scrutineers at International Security Printers can miss it then so can I! The 81p in the British Inventiveness prestige booklet is sea green but it should have been holly green - the colour of the De La Rue self adhesive issued in March 2014. The sea green version dates back to 2008! So that is what all the fuss was about.

I am not sure it need make the stamp any more valuable, though, as it would have been a different item anyway, both as a new printer and with its security code.

Now an 81½p would have been more interesting...

A somewhat over-designed prestige booklet came out this week. Inventive Britain sort of excuses the enthusiastic design evident in the front and rear covers, celebrating as it does some remarkable achievements by inhabitants of our islands over the years.

Inside there is some good text and the set of 10 special issue stamps, with two of them duplicated to make the three panes of four add up. There's invention all right. More to the point, though, and the first stamp pane for a welcome change too, is the Machin pane in what has become a very fixed three by three affair with someone having to conjure up something suitable to go in the middle. Why we have to have a label in the middle when another stamp would be perfectly acceptable is beyond me.

Some commentators are promoting this as of equal importance to the Wedgwood £3 book and its ½p pale blue left band because there is just one 81p in this book and I suppose the 81p is vaguely similar in colour. It is, though, some 162 times higher in face value so may have a chance but with the ½p stamps currently going for about £10 in a complete pane a £10 price tag for the 81p isn't that difficult to envisage anyway.

There does appear to have been quite a bit of advance interest with Royal Mail apparently restricting orders of panes as dealers tried to stock up in a big way, expecting this to be something of a special item. I am not convinced, especially as no-one uses the stamps in prestige books these days. In the Wedgwood book days they did and there lies the difference. Even the design of the panes doesn't exactly encourage anyone to tear the stamps out, even on the special issue pages. The firm want you to but the book and put it away somewhere. If you need to post something the pop down to the post office and they'll put a Horizon label on it or just get some NVIs at the supermarket.

The book has four new Machins that we need: 

1p crimson 2B

2p deep green 2B

81p sea green 2B

97p mauve 2B

All have the M14L MPIL code and are printed by International Security Printers who, I think, get called Cartor still.

No, I didn't leave the £1.47 stamp in clothes that got washed by mistake

 

 Post And Gos continue to multiply. Now we have the definitive set with the new Type 4 font and these appear, annoyingly, on background designs both with and without the date code MA13. You'd have thought they would at least have made that MA14.

Furthermore and further requiring credit card action are two more overprints. Stampex 2014 and The BPMA continue to get publicity from these issues. They, too, will appear in two versions, dated and undated backgrounds. Strangely, I took the decision not to collect the overprints but still get them on my standard order with my dealer but I don't get the Flags changes. Something odd there which I'll have to attend to. The Flags are a sort of alternative definitive that crops up from time to time when no-one is too sure what roll to put into machines. It really does seem to have a pretty random appearance profile which is why I would actually like to have them and will just put the overprints up for sale.

Flags will be appearing when I get them. For now you need to look out for them with the new Type 4 font with and without MA13, and in Type 3a font a BPMA Postage Due 1914 overprint again ith and without MA13. (I am presuming it'll be MA13).

As if that were not enough additions to my catalogue list, a batch of 1st Class Stampex 2014 normal definitives were issued with the value inscription 1st Class Large instead of the usual 1st Class. I wasn't lucky enough to get these overprints by mistake, just the corrected ones. Odd that.

Back to fairly normal Machins the 1st Large and 2nd Large stamps from Walsall now have Type 2 slits - there is a clear break top and bottom - so are new stamps. They have MA13 and MBIL in the overprint, being from Business Sheets. Now, it may just be me or the light here but they also seem to have a very bright and clear iridescent overprints. I am sure a new process is being used for that.

 

 

A recent, not very much published change in postage rates has brought along the usual Spring new definitives. There are four new additions to the amazingly still growing list of Machin denominations. Wonderfully bizarre values: 81p, 97p, £1.47 and £2.15. The £1.47 appears to have been left in someone's pocket during a wash cycle but that really is the true colour and not my scanner playing up. I suppose the postmarks will be clear but I would be quite disappointed if I have handed over £1.47 and had that in return. The surface of the 81p, in particular, looks quite scratchy when compared to older issues. All except the £1.47 have blemishes I am not used to noticing. It will be interesting to see whether this is something that all Machins just have and is neither here nor there or whether it is a significant quality matter that gets addressed and, of course, either the replacements of the originals then become collectable in a big way.

 

The Regional issues get in on the act too with each issuing a 97p value. In what must be one of the longer running designs now I think about it, the Northern Ireland lace, Welsh blue (why blue anyone?) daffodil, Scottish thistle and English oak now have nines and sevens inscribed where one were just eights and, in 2001, just the letter E.