Snow for Christmas and even less visible Freshwater Life

Wincor Font Type 2 What you'll find at Post Offices

Hytech Type 3 This is what was in Presentation Packs

Hytech Type 3a from Autumn Stampex 

There are now three variations of the Freshwater Life 3 Post and Gos. The usual two - type 3 ones you'll never see unless people break up their Presentation Packs and type 2 ones you might see if you're lucky to have friends or clients who use Post and Gos and then there's the very rare variety, type 3a, which someone could only have obtained on a couple of days at an exhibition.

I have just shown singles above to make it clear what the font and layout differences are. The Presentation Pack strip is 6 x 1st Class and was illustrated in my last post.

2nd Large finally appear in booklets with MA13 and F codes.

Some M12L Code Ts from Walsall books have been found with a really snowy print, very obvious on closer view as the illustration below shows.

The De La Rue 2nd counter sheet belatedly gets the MA13 code too. You would have thought this one would have been needed ages ago but perhaps people stocked up heavily on the MA12s and are only now going back to ask for more.

Fresh Freshwater Life emerges

Freshwater Life II Post and Gos now have three types: from the top in this illustration, Type 3 from the presentation pack, Type 2 from machines in offices up and down the country and now Type 3a which comes from machines Royal Mail installed at two regional exhibitions in Leamington Spa and York on 6 July. As these would only have been available for a limited period of a day and Freshwater Life III stamps will be used at the next outings, it looks like these will be extremely scarce indeed.

Next in a weird month comes an 87p Northern Ireland pictorial definitive in a distinctly darker shade. I should have compared it to an original 87p, I know. Only just noticed it was an 88p I used!

Next, coils of 10000 1st gold Machins were produced by Enschede for large distributors and the later ones had a MRIL MA12 code, making this the first, albeit belated, appearance of that code on the 1st gold.

The 20p has now emerged with the MA13 code as predicted.

Walsall booklets of 12 2nd blue CB code M11L MTIL with bright fluor have appeared on the scene. The booklet was the PIP cover without printer information and all previous books have had dull fluor.

Background information courtesy of Messrs B Alan & Co who are much better at this fluor stuff than I am. I must buy some gadget for viewing this. Any recommendations?

The World Comes And Goes

I now have another strip of Post and Gos from the Australia EXPO thing - the same as the last one but I do have two 1st Class ones with the World missing from the AU printings.

You'll recall that the GB printings had World Stamp Expo 

Are these things ever going to go mainstream? Royal Mail are certainly putting a lot into establishing more and more locations where people can buy them but they are still barely known outside the collectors' fraternity and, perhaps, a few who live close to one.

The British quite like queueing and having a human being to take their letter or parcel, do the honours and tell them how much to pay. It's pretty simple and it works. The staff even have the big gold Horizon labels to slap on so they don't have to work out which combination of sheet stamps will add up to the sum required. Now that makes me wonder who on Earth now buys the sheet stamps! And we can see just how many aren't being sold by the dearth of 2013 codes so far this year.

Going back to the Post and Gos, there are several things wrong with them. The size is bigger than people are familiar with. I suppose the space taken up is similar to a few traditional size stamps next to each other but it still seems unnecessarily big to me. I am not sure anyone really needs to know the denomination. Once it's paid and stuck on that's that really. I suppose someone could put a small parcel on the scale and print a load of Europe 10g and then proceed to slap them on 39g parcels to Outer Mongolia. So maybe I can see the reason for a Europe / World distinction up to a point, but then I am never too sure where one ends and the other starts. What is of more concern is the fact that over 40g you're back in the queue talking to people again anyway. Is the vast proportion of parcels sent at weights below 40g so that this makes a significant difference to the administration costs to Royal Mail? So, OK, the denomination needs to be clear to staff handling it down the line but a code would suffice that need not take up much space at all. I guess no-one likes the idea of printing over the Machin head but the label could definitely be smaller.

My main objection, though, or more embarrassment, concerns the designs of the 'pretty' issues. A picture takes up half the label. It's a flat colour background - an impression of the environment rather than photographic or in any sense realistic, which is fine and has a certain style. On top of that, though is a drawing or painting of some animal that is neither in the background style nor sufficiently realistic to contrast as it might. It may well be a good drawing, although I am not so sure about some of them, but it simply doesn't work as a design. Compared to some of the brilliant examples in the commemorative stamp issues, these come a very sad second, or even third!.

Oh well. One thing that has been worthwhile has been my search for the 1985 stamp image. Not collecting commemorative issues for many years now, I had not realised just how many I had missed. Some sets look fabulous but others also look dreadful. I shall revisit some of these, I think, and reproduce some of the best and worst here. It's not exactly 31p purple, I know but something I feel I should do. There are also some Castle Commemoratives that I am none too sure I had. Now those I may have to acquire, even though they were not, strictly speaking, definitive, or even casually speaking for that matter. They just look like a set I should have to go with the other actual Castle definitives.

More wild life - some you might even actually see

Here are the Pond Life 2 Post and Gos that you are more likely to see in the real world, with Type 2 typeface from the Wincor machines.

Some pretty butterflies add to the casual nature of this distribution with the familiar 4 x 1st Machins.

Just four items in this month's envelope. The 1st red is a Code 13C with pale head and bright fluor from the Football Heroes mixed booklet pane of 4. the 2nd blue is a scarce Code 11T with bright fluor from books of 12. Then we have the 2nd Large from counter sheets (you can see how quickly they're not selling!) with Code 13 at last and the De LaRue version of the 78p Code 13 MA13.

I am so glad that I cancelled my order for minor variations in iridescent overprints and phosphor bands! As you can see from the extracts from the stock list, just nine singles would have set me back £81 and some frightening prices for booklets would have meant my daughter's driving lessons would have have had to have been put off for another few weeks and I would have had to be the one gripping the passenger seat and stamping on invisible brakes.

I do seem to have missed, though, a darker shade for the Northern Ireland 87p linen definitive. That may be because I was concentrating on Machins in my original order so I had better correct that and will feature that as soon as it arrives. Now colour shade changes are something I do look forward to and don't mind paying for.

More fish in the pond

I decided to cancel the supply of small shifts in iridescent overprints and phosphor bands. These items have been extraordinarily expensive and, whilst it would be nice to think they will be sufficiently scarce to sell at some point for even more, they really do not inspire me as a collector and, visually, are not at all obvious in the main. If you do have a spare £12.50 that would buy you a 1st red with both phosphor band and iridescent overprint slightly inset at the right on M13L Code B from a Business sheet, for instance. £9.50 would buy you one from the same type of sheet with a short at the bottom overprint. I am beginning to wonder if there are, in fact, any normal versions at all! Hence, for now at least, my abandoning them.

Recent new finds I am collecting include these 1st reds from Walsall with dull fluor

Code M12L - S
Code M13L - S
Code M13L - C (from the Loco NI booklet below)

 

And it really doesn't seem very long ago that Freshwater Life I was new on the scene but here comes the sequel Freshwater Life II, featuring Perch, Eel, Carp, Caddis Fly Lava, an Arctic Char and a Toad. Unless your nearest lake is in the Orkneys you are pretty unlikely to spot the Char which is a curious addition to the series but someone somewhere must have thought it was a good idea.

These are the Presentation Pack stamps. The ones that will actually get used for mail will be arriving in a while, presumably with a similar difference in font for the overprint  as for other recent issues.

These are really quite uninspiring and the artwork for the series is unlikely to win any awards or, for that matter, have the public rushing down to their local Post Office to negotiate with a machine to get them to use on their envelopes or parcels. I think I have received precisely one Post And Go stamp on my mail so far this year, and that was on a package from a dealer! I do wonder just how many people really are using these. The quite impressive roll-out of machines to various locations does seem to indicate that Royal Mail has some faith in them and perhaps they are popular in busy places where they might provide a way of skipping long queues if all you want is a stamp. How long, though, will it be before there are queues at these just as slow as at the counter?

The Toad stamp is particularly dire, illustration-wise, in my opinion. It looks more like some cartoon character! Oh well.