Something a stamp collector would collect

This is a Collectors' Pack prepared by The Post Office in 2009. It contains specially printed versions of the then new Post&Go labels. They're really quite different from the actual labels - check out the code inscription on the real ones below for a start.

The specially produced pack, though, is the most expensive Post&Go item in the 2014 SG Concise Catalogue. That doesn't seem right to me - you'd think the real ones which someone had to go and get from a machine somewhere would be a lot more valuable than something akin to a decorative plate that you could get on-line or, I suppose more likely then, with a phone call.

It is odd too that the Philatelic Bureau didn't (and still don't) supply real labels - ones that might stand some chance of being used in a postal way. (Whether we do or not is up to us. I like mint stuff because it's nice and clean and easy to see which variety it is and also I can get missing ones for gaps much more easily but I have a lot of respect for those who collect used items and am beginning to think that their collections, even with the inevitable gaps it will have unless they've been sending stuff to themselves, are rather more honest.) Even I do little to acquire my issues these days - they all come on standing orders although I have to say I still have a huge amount of work to do to file them and record them somehow but I haven't made much effort to find them in the first place.

So with all this in mind it is odd that several dealers and Mr Gibbons himself have announced that the Open Value labels are not stamps and they'll neither be stocking nor including them in catalogues.

To my mind these are far more like the stamps of old that I had to go to a Post Office to buy. I am still a bit confused as to why we have both the Post&Gos with service indicators spelt out in a large font as well as these. I am guessing these will slowly replace the others as I understand that the machines can dispense a much bigger range than the few in the current form.

Unless I have missed something, the only difference between the two would be that the new style have to be used on the day they're issued whereas the others can be hoarded for years and used at some point in the future. Ah! Is that a pertinent factor for dealers? If the items have no validity for post a few hours after being dispensed then a dealer's stock value has no bottom floor. There will always be someone who'll buy mint 'stamps' - and as time passes rate increases should ensure that even offering a discount on face value need not mean making a loss - but the only people who can determine a price for the new items are us collectors. (I am taking the collectors' side here as I'm not much of a dealer really) No-one wants to be in our hands! Imagine: we could all decide that some issue is very tedious and not wish to pay more than a few pence for them but get very excited over another and the dealers will have no idea what to expect.

Well, maybe they should. Careful observation of the market should give the smart ones a good idea of what is likely to be in demand and where shortages might mean decent prices can apply. Take the extraordinarily short period when the items illustrated were available. A few days after these were printed the rates rose to 53p and 62p and you won't see either rate again in those colours unless something very strange happens like predictions of negative inflation prove correct but then we'll have more problems than whether dealers should list these items to worry about.

At least in writing this I have envisaged some vaguely reasonable explanation for why some dealers don't want to stock these things but I do still dispute this business of whether or not they are 'stamps'. They may not satisfy some old definition but as far as I'm concerned they're something a stamp collector would collect. and if what a stamp collector collects isn't stamps then we need a different name. But we'll still collect them, whatever they're called. How about notstamps?

The little boy in the village test - Part 2

In my last article I tried to explain why I would not be collecting or listing quite a large range of Post And Go issues - the ones that I really don't feel have ever been 'available' to anyone other than the people who sell them.

Now I am extending that still further, from the limited issue Machin definitive Post And Gos to the overprints that, by and large, were also only available at exhibitions and fairs. The same logic works for them. I never actually liked them anyway as it seemed that commercial organisations were getting space on stamps. I have nothing against Stampex, The BPMA and the like but simply don't see why they need to promote themselves on what I had thought were British definitive issues. That, of course, is where I had gone wrong. They aren't definitive issues. They are specialist labels that happen to be printed on similar backing to the stamps available to the public and whilst they can be used postally they really never seem to be. I mean, there are few enough of any Post And Gos on our post these days as it is, never mind the chances of encountering one of these with an overprint as well.

Mr Gibbons says that overprints were only available from those limited outlets but I am not so sure about that. I believe there may be one or two that have been more freely available to the public and it is important that we don't chuck out the valid collection babies with the specialist bath water.

I am going to have a bit of a job figuring out which to keep in the list and may remove all to start with and re-introduce any deserving cases when I get to know about them from my research. I know there are some real experts out there and maybe they might like to help. Clearly whoever has been advising Mr Gibbons knows his stuff but I feel he might have advised a little more carefully on one or two items, even if they were not likely to get far out in the wild. They might have reached my little boy in the village. His Granny might just have happened to buy one from a machine somewhere.

OK, point taken, let us assume, please, that Granny is not a Stampex fan.

So most of my overprint listings are going to disappear from the sheet and end up on Ebay in a week or so, along with the 'scarce' Machin types too.

Now, you're wondering. What on Earth is he going to do about the pictorial issues?

Well, I had previously abandoned the silly Presentation Packs. While they had specially printed versions that no-one is ever going to use on a letter and which are just going to stay in a plastic envelope then they seem no more than an advert. If anything, the Post Office should be giving these to us collectors, maybe when we buy a real set or something. But they are definitely pointless. There may be some examples where real labels, the same as those available to buy, are in the packs and they can stay. I haven't thought yet which might be in this category, if any!

Now I have to accept that the 'normal' ones are pretty much like the commemorative or special issues we've all got used to seeing. I gave up collecting them many years ago and really have not missed anything. Looking at the prices, too, there appears to be nothing of much value either, many sets from recent years being available at less than face value if you look hard too! The only real interest I had in the pretty ones was the variation in font styles that existed and the fact that some came with Worldwide 40g or whatever. Because they didn't commemorate anything they fooled me into regarding them as a bit 'definitive'. I had often written in years gone by about what might replace Machins and pretty stamps like these illustrations seemed likely candidates. So when they appeared I was a bit taken in. Now I just see them as labels with six different pictures on. Heavens! Remember the days when we felt we needed to have each value with each denomination. Mr Alan still supplies these as they are, indeed, different. I even got some for a couple of issues but at £77 for each set - and there were, of course, two types - that was way out of order. I think now what else I could have bought with £154. A really nice old Victorian stamp. Some mint early high values. All kind of lovely - and much safer as investment - stuff too.

So I am going to continue listing the pretty issues - those that are available generally, that is. Most of them are, I believe. It is the Flags and Robins that have complicated geneology but I'll figure it out eventually. I don't want to collect them myself, though, so my collection of all kind of weird and wonderful items - some with huge fonts and missing text but mostly just fairly boring - will be on Ebay soon too. That includes the 72 items I mentioned and also there are 30 Birds III with the wrong font I which I paid nearly £300 for. Good grief. Some nice items coming  for those of you in that Specialist pen in the field!

That will leave me with just the public issue Machins and one or two others. A modest collection but, to be quite honest, that's all these particular Post And Gos are going to be - a modest collection of items available for a while before something more permanent comes along.

I might have been inclined to think that the new NCR type Post And Gos would be that new something. However, Mr Gibbons doesn't mention them. That may be because they were issued too late for his catalogue. I personally think he hadn't decided at the time so just took the easy option! Mr Alan has placed his cards firmly on the table, though. "They're not stamps," he says. Apparently that's because they can only be supplied one at a time and have to be used straightaway. I reckon they're much more like a 'stamp' to the little boy in the village than any of those hundreds of pounds worth of Wincor, or was it Hytech, font style 2 with short phosphor and value overlapping the picture that came from one machine on a Tuesday in a room on the third floor of a building in York.

I am quite surprised that neither Mr Alan nor Mr Gibbon are supporting the NCR invasion. As I see it, machines are being enthusiastically installed at more and more Post Offices and they are, of anything, the most likely to be actually seen on some post. They replace the white printed labels type which I agree were never stamps as such. Interestingly, I have seen piles of the big gold Horizon labels. They have been very successful and if these NCR labels were to be used for the Horizon purposes too then that would be very interesting.

It is difficult when there could be so many values available but isn't that part of the fun of collecting? Dealers could do well supplying the full range for those who go for the easy route of collecting by standing order. Who knows, maybe Tallents House will beat them all to it! I detected some surprise at their issue of a 'Collectors' Pack' with five examples of them, describing them as Post And Gos in the write-up.

So I shall be listing these as best I can, with limited awareness of what is coming out and when but I'll try to get some information. Offers of help gratefully welcomed!

While I am on the subject of collecting stamps I have been feeling for some time now like one of those old people that collects decorated plates and gets a new one every month on standing order. They cost far more than she'll ever get back and they're never going to be used as plates. I may have cut out the special issues but I still get the Prestige books. I have always been taken in by these splendidly produced little booklets and would rush to see what was in that Machin definitive pane. I seldom noticed what else was in the book. For a while, these books were quite desirable and fetched good prices. After the first one or two, though, few of the stamps got used and more recently that became highly unlikely when they were priced at a figure higher than the sum of their contents. These books are the old lady's plates. They look lovely, can be quite interesting but the only reason I have been getting them is to have examples of those two or three variations of definitives or Regional issues that they contain. I know they'll never see the light of a postal day but the completeness drug is difficult to quit. What I need to do, I think, is keep the pane but use or the rest or sell them. Once a book's content might be predominantly Machin definitives, with several panes, but now it is usually just the single pane with special issues occupying most of the panes. So where before it might have made sense to keep the whole book - because it comprised just the panes I wanted to keep and because it had a significant value intact - now I am not so sure that is the case. One or two will always be a bit special but many may struggle on the open market to return face value. So I may just as well keep the ones I need for the definitive completeness and sell the rest.

Looking at most of the output for us collectors now, we really are being regarded by the marketing boys as the little old ladies with plates rather than the little boy in the village. We'll take without much question whatever comes out, stick it in a box, an album or wherever things go nowadays and not think a great deal more about it. The only real stamps are the definitives and a few special issues that get issued at post office counters or put in books that people buy day to day and that eventually get stuck on envelopes and packages. Like the normal definitives, some Post And Gos, some NCRs, even Horizon labels - the things the little boy in the village will want. The rest is pure income generation. We all need to wise up a bit.

You know what would make a really cool stamp collection? What we did when we were little - collect used stamps. Now that was collecting. What we do now is just buying. Anyone can do that, especially when you get old and haven't so many other things to pay for.

That's what the little boy in the village should want. Stamps that may cost nothing. Dealers can still supply ones to fill the gaps - and there'll be a lot of those if his mail looks anything like mine.

Rare stamps!!

I actually got some stamps on an envelope in the mail this morning. The fact that it was from another dealer in Machin stamps says it all really. Are we the only people who are now using these? Is this 'collecting' lark merely a sort of self-perpetuating affair where Royal Mail know that we're the only people buying them and just produce all sorts of variations for the fun of it and watch contentedly as people like me write articles encouraging you to acquire this or that?

Oh well, for the benefit of those who are still awake and wondering what is new out there, here are the latest developments and issues.

The first is a 2nd Large DLR with M14L date code. Then there's a book of 12 Walsall 2nd CB showing M14L MTIL which will doubtless be the most frequently found stamp on post this year so not exactly worth a fortune but needed nonetheless if you're going to keep that collection complete.

Next we have three more DLR items. A 10p, 20p  and 1st Large showing M14L.

Now there's is something surprising. A new Post And Go print showing both Euro 20g and World 10g which are now the same price but it must have been confusing for people wanting to send something 9g to somewhere that wasn't in Europe. To be honest, I get confused by the rates and weights anyway and really do wonder whether this idea of NVIing everything is that bright after all.

It all started with 1st and 2nd and then E came along when we had a perfectly adequate 34p stamp (or whatever the rate was at the time). I suppose it did mean that we could buy stamps and carry on using them after a rate change and got a little bit of satisfaction from the fact that spending all that money in advance had saved us a few pence later. So those made some sense and it always seemed pretty reasonable to buy an Airmail envelope (actually, maybe that was where it started now I think about it) and just pay whatever the latest price was for the flimsy sheet of blue paper.

The latest flurry of activity around these rates and weights, though, seems to be heading for confusion. They are trying to hang on to six for the 'collector's strips' as all sorts of problems will develop if there are numbers like 11 or 5. The NCR machine putting values on the labels seems to be going back to the original idea of a stamp but just adding the value at the end instead of us having to buy a range and make up the rate ourselves.

For now, though, the Post And Gos continue apace with these two overprint issues, 'The B.P.M.A. on Flags and Machin olives. Both these have the new dual value although here in Type 4 font at the same point size for both lines, unlike the NCR Type 2a font with its different sizes.

The Machin Post And Gos here all have an MA13 date code. I imagine there must be a lot of that year's backing around so it could be some time before we see MA14. The NCRs below are the 'normal' basic set which I think I have featured before but that may have been with no date code or a strip I had earlier. the Worldwide 10g and 40g values will exist as these were still in being when the first NCRs appeared and will be worth hanging on to.

Of course, there is still no mention from some dealers of the other NCRs - the ones with the actual values printed that I have written about recently. I am still none the wiser as to whether they are indeed likely to be a myriad different denominations for those. I am pretty sure there will be - a similar range to those we see on Horizon labels seems logical although perhaps the 'Signed For' denominations and one or two others can't be included because there would need to be some paperwork kept behind the counter and if someone had to queue up afterwards to hand that over it defeats the purpose of the automatic machines.

So far, I have to say that by far the most common labels I am seeing on post are the Horizon gold ones. They're awkward to collect but do seem to be the range that is surviving. I will write about them in an article soon.

38 denominations and counting

Sometimes I don't quite know why I do things but I wondered just how many different denominations might appear at current rates on the new NCR Post And Go Labels. I guess these may also be what you'd find on Horixon labels too. I haven't covered huge great packages or International Tracked or all sorts of Special Delivery before, during and after breakfast services. The list below, though, should cover all the prices up to about £5. It may be of interest to someone.

If anyone cares to let me have the previous rates then I can add them to this table and that would then be a pretty complete list. Having said that, I don't yet know whether the NCR labels can, indeed, be used for all these services. It may be that some aren't possible. That would be nice to know and I could then cut the list down a bit.

One thing's for sure. I have now decided that I shall not be setting out to collect mint examples of each one!

£ Price	Type	Weight	Service
0.53	2nd Class Letter	<100g td="">	UK Std
0.62	1st Class Letter	<100g td="">	UK Std
0.73	2nd Class Large Letter	<100g td="">	UK Std
0.81	Small Parcel	<20g td="">	Int Economy
0.93	1st Class Large Letter	<100g td="">	UK Std
0.97	Letter	<10g td="">	Int Standard	Wordwide Z1	Worldwide Z2
0.97	Letter	<20g td="">	Int Standard	Europe
1.17	2nd Class Large Letter	<250g td="">	UK Std
1.24	1st Class Large Letter	<250g td="">	UK Std
1.28	Letter	<20g td="">	Int Standard	Wordwide Z1	Worldwide Z2
1.43	Letter	<60g td="">	Int Economy
1.47	Letter	<60g td="">	Int Standard	Europe
1.48	2nd Class Large Letter	<500g td="">	UK Std
1.63	2nd Class Letter	<100g td="">	Signed For
1.72	1st Class Letter	<100g td="">	Signed For
1.83	2nd Class Large Letter	<100g td="">	Signed For
2.01	2nd Class Large Letter	<750g td="">	UK Std
2.02	Letter	<100g td="">	Int Economy
2.03	1st Class Large Letter	<100g td="">	Signed For
2.15	Letter	<60g td="">	Int Standard	Wordwide Z1	Worldwide Z2
2.27	2nd Class Large Letter	<250g td="">	Signed For
2.34	1st Class Large Letter	<250g td="">	Signed For
2.36	Letter	<100g td="">	Int Standard	Europe
2.38	1st Class Large Letter	<750g td="">	UK Std
2.58	2nd Class Large Letter	<500g td="">	Signed For
2.75	1st Class Large Letter	<500g td="">	Signed For
2.80	Small Parcel	<1kg td="">	UK Std
2.80	Small Parcel	<100g td="">	Int Economy
3.11	2nd Class Large Letter	<750g td="">	Signed For	Signed For
3.20	Small Parcel	<1kg td="">	UK Std
3.20	Letter	<100g td="">	Int Standard	Europe
3.48	1st Class Large Letter	<750g td="">	Signed For
3.48	Letter	<100g td="">	Int Standard	Wordwide Z1	Worldwide Z2
3.65	Small Parcel	<250g td="">	Int Economy
3.70	Small Parcel	<250g td="">	Int Standard	Europe
3.80	Small Parcel	<2kg td="">	UK Std
3.80	Small Parcel	<100g td="">	Int Standard	Wordwide Z1
3.90	Small Parcel	<1kg td="">	Signed For
4.00	Small Parcel	<100g td="">	Int Standard	Worldwide Z2
4.30	Small Parcel	<1kg td="">	Signed For
4.75	Small Parcel	<250g td="">	Int Standard	Wordwide Z1
4.90	Small Parcel	<2kg td="">	Signed For
5.05	Small Parcel	<250g td="">	Int Standard	Worldwide Z2

On the Horizons

Although it's very big and 'parcely' and only comes in used form* the gold Horizon label that appeared in 2009 deserves a place in a Machin collection. It has taken a while but I think I have worked out which types are which and why now.

Type 1
Perforated style edge
Thick font
Slits all around
Date style //
no VAT .code

Type 1a
Perforated style edge
Thin font
Date style - -
no VAT .code

Type 1b
Perforated style edge
Thin font
Date style //
with  VAT .code

Type 2
Straight edges
Thin font
Date style - -
no VAT .code

Type 2b
Straight edges
Thin font
Date style //
with VAT .code

 Types 1 and 2 have slits all around. Type 2a and 3 have slits just down the sides.

Type 2a
same as Type 2b but with slits just left and right

Type 3
Printed by Walsall. I am still trying to find an easy way to tell Walsall Type 3 apart from DLR Type 2a!

My site listing has 8 entries but I am not sure one of them exists. That's the Type 1a with // date style. I have a feeling that you will only get the // date style with the later VAT .code types. When the change from fat font to thin font was made the // date style changed to - - and only reappeared when the set-up was changed to add a VAT .code.

More likely, actually, now I think about it, might be a Type 2 straight edge with a fat font if someone had the new supply of blanks but hadn't updated the printing machine software. That's pretty unlikely too, though.

So I reckon there are just 7 types to look for at the moment which means you should have a good chance of getting this part of your collection 'complete' quite easily. That is assuming, of course, that you're not looking to get every service indicator. There are about 20 of them so you'll need 140 items which I guess exist but some will be hard to find! I quite like the fact that you can't just buy these over the counter, take them home and put them in an album. Well, you could send some packages to yourself I suppose but you won't know what type of label they'll affix unless you get a chance to peer over a friendly PO Counter staff's shoulder, I suppose.

This brings collecting right back to our earliest days (well, my earliest days - you may have been lucky and had someone who bought you all the new issues) when it was just those on envelopes that we had. It's a pity they're so damn big but, apart from that, I am happy to include them and have realised that they're there before prices start to rise. You should be able to get most label types for under a £1 and it may well be worthwhile buying a big bag or two to see what variations you can find. I may well have to extend that list when I get mine. No-one really knows what to charge at the moment. The postage value isn't terribly relevant so it's just down to rarity and only time will tell in that respect. At present the most expensive are the Type 2s with codes at about £2. I would have thought it would have been the older Type 1s with codes but they're just £1.

It is, though, very early days and there's not much interest yet so much depends upon whether others like me decide they're collectable or not.

*You can buy blanks from some dealers. I'm not sure how they got hold of them and they're not actually stamps at all without the overprint but are attractive and informative background additions for a collection and, not having been through the rigours of being attached to soft bendy packages, thrown around sorting rooms and vans, may display more clearly some of the differences between 1, 2a and 3.

Definitely definitive?

One of the fundamentals about collecting stamps is the desire to gather complete sets of issues. We can argue about the depths of desire involved - the extent to which we are prepared to overlook minor changes - but that completeness is a key feature. Whilst my main interest is Machins, I have also regarded what used to be clearly definitive issues as a vital part of my collection and the occasional forays the Post Office made into non-Machin designs were essential additions.

The 1d black anniversary issues, therefore, required no second thought - even though they commemorated something, they were the same size and, of course, what they commemorated was indeed the ultimate definitive itself! They were also Machins in my view, and most others', from the start anyway so that was a simple decision.

The Greetings stamps that first appeared in 1989 were fun and didn't commemorate anything but then neither had Birds or a host of preceding theme-like issues so in my mind at the time they were a separate and non-definitive group. Similarly, Christmas stamps didn't bother me in the slightest. Until the flag one appeared.

First there was this one:

and later this one:

The first flag came with a similarly sized sunflower, Hello, Love, Teddy and the robin in a letter box. I was just about able to dismiss those as 'Greetings' or 'Christmas' and safely non-definitive but the flag bothered me, especially as it was the right size.

Definitives had also, almost exclusively, been that small standard size so something else appearing in those dimensions triggered 'definitive' in my brain in late 2005 and has been firing queries ever since. I was, however, I now recall, quite happy to dismiss the bigger horizontal format flag issues as not definitive so I think I have finally satisfied that portion of my mind that was asking questions at inconvenient moments and worrying me about that completeness thing.

Douglas Myall, the Lord of all that is Machin, wrote in the September 2012 Philatelic Bulletin on this subject and, whilst he made excellent points there, he concluded with "In my view, an important feature of a definitive is that the main element of the design must be a portrait of the monarch". I have trouble with that conclusion as it would imply that the Castles High Values, from 2/6 to the £5 in 1988 and later reproduced as a miniature sheet in 2005 were not definitives whereas I would never have thought they could be anything but definitive.

My logic for that statement further helps my sorting out my brain too; if you needed a 10/- stamp in those earlier days then the blue Castle 10/- was what the Post Office gave you. There wasn't anything else. So it was the definitive 10/- stamp. If you are in Northern Ireland and wander into a Post Office and ask for a 1st Class stamp then the chances are that you'll be handed a small standard size green stamp with fields on. There hasn't been any other Northern Ireland 1st Class stamp since 1998 (ignoring the one-off Design book in 2000 which produced a unique 1st NI Machin!). So I would call that pretty definitive. Maybe that's a good name: Pretty definitives!

I remember writing back in 1999, when there were thoughts that the Machin series might end, that I wouldn't mind seeing sets of new definitives for each country featuring buildings or views so the Northern Ireland issues sat happily as definitives, as did the other non-Machin Regionals. I suppose that if I were to extend that thought further then one would have to consider again anything vaguely 'national' that isn't commemorating anything as definitive. Heavens, that would bring in the 2005 Farm Animal stamps which are even the right size! And those flags.

Well, it might, I say to myself hurriedly, had they been the prime items that would have been supplied to requests for a particular denomination stamp. But they weren't. Even the ubiquitous Hello stamps didn't manage that status, although selling them in booklets did make them pretty popular. But not definitive. The Machins have always been that. That's not to say you can only have the one definitive at a time for any denomination or that it has to be widely available or we'd have trouble with many items that were only available for a short period but were none the less very much definitives.

So, until it looks as though a new series is going to replace the Machins, all these others are also-rans in the Definitive Stakes. Despite Royal Mail calling the Olympic small size 1st and Worldwide stamps 'definitives', they're not. In fact, they don't require any second thoughts - they're celebrating the Olympics and came out to do so and have now gone. Not exactly definitive behaviour so I shall ignore that classification by our friends at Royal Mail and put it down to an alcoholic lunch by the staff at Tallents House one day when they were preparing the literature. As Douglas Myall points out, though, if you had 'special issues' only on your standing order with Tallents House you would not have received those Olympic ones which were, however, distributed to those, like myself, with a 'definitive' standing order!

The National Castles issues that featured pictures of castles as labels with a 1st Class Welsh red and green dragon, English flag and Scotland's saltire are close calls in the definitive debate. (They left Northern Ireland with just the familiar definitive fields.) It's that flag thing again. I may just defer a decision on those, although, as they were not exactly commonly available to the casual purchaser at the Post Office counter, I probably won't have too much trouble assigning them elsewhere, maybe best along with their bigger horizontal format cousins.

That does seem to have cleared my head a great deal, which was the purpose of the article.

It has also greatly reduced my imminent expenditure on necessary catch-ups as I hadn't been getting the Smiler sheets for many years. As all the items I have been debating were also issued in Smiler sheets that would have brought a whole new printer being required to be collected into the frame along with the DLRs or Walsalls for the mainstream versions where they existed. I have spent best part of a day rummaging through dealers' annoyingly badly designed websites trying to get a complete list of all the printings of the all the candidates for my catalogue in this section and that list was growing rapidly, as were the prices of some of the early items I may well have missed. Then, of course, I would need to find the equivalent DLR or Walsall versions and everything seemed to be in sheets or panes when I just wanted singles. So having decided not to include them that is one big relief!

I think, despite some of the logic I appear to have developed, what actually decided me were all those Farm Animal stamps, of which I recall seeing about three in total in use and which I have been extremely reluctant to grant the same status as a good many decent contenders, let alone as genuine definitives. They lacked class, presence, that je ne sais quoi that British definitive stamps should bear. I would have really stuggled with New Baby issues and the seemingly never-ending stream of ruddy sheets from this or that place featuring the Hello stamps. I am really not very concerned that Indonesia is doing something and rather question the need to say Hello to whatever it is. That's the way I feel about most commemoratives - I can take them or leave them, however well designed some may be. So that Smilers list can grow and grow for all I care and Cartor can have special techniques, apps and sheets of all sorts and I can happily ignore them for a while, except for the occasions when they do feature their version of a real definitive, of course.

I was about to relax and finish this when I looked through the lastest material from Royal Mail. Dragonflies take up three pages in the February Bulletin!  These Post and Gos are serious business, and that's not just in terms of income generation for Royal Mail either. Could they be the future definitive? If so, then, by definition, these early examples of the product in development will become definitive in retrospect. I have already included the Machin head and printed rate ones as definitives, as has Douglas Myall. What do I do about the Birds and the Bees, sorry ... dragonflies? If we take my casual person who wanders into Post Offices then he or she may well find they're dispensed one with a pretty picture by default. If they have to choose that then it's not a definitive. But if it gets doled out to them in some sort of Definitive of the Day fashion, then my argument breaks down.

Just as I was prepared to envisage scenes of Britain becoming a definitive issue in the course of time, so could these Birds, Farm Animals and whatever else they have up their sleeves. If these things had remained an oddity, produced only at a few locations and seldom to be seen except on Ebay, then I would have no problem not bothering about them. They do seem to be getting more widespread, though, and if 143 machines (or whatever the number of locations where they're available is now) grow it is feasible that they could become the new definitive label. Note I didn't use the term stamp. If they do supercede the Machins we know and love then we'll want to have had all those early ones. 

I am belatedly getting the non-pictorial ones in each denomination and type but not the overprints. As for the pictorials, I can't take the risk that they don't fade away so I'll get 1st Class examples of each to start with. 36 for each set would be a bit much, I feel. Royal Mail has the three Farm Animals issues and the Flag issue so it is only the 4 Birds I need at this time. Birds 1,3 and 4 are available at only slightly above cost but Birds 2 seems pricey. I have a bid on that so hopefully that will bring me up to date. 

One encouraging thing is that the numbers of these Post and Gos being sold, and the frequency of change, coupled with what I suspect will be inevitable tweaks to the machines, paper, printing etc. as they develop, ought to make them attain higher prices in future than normal commemoratives, if that's what they do turn out to be in the end, and that little bit more collectible. I can't say I'm excited at all about deciding to add them but it will be fascinating perhaps to return to this article, or have someone land on it in future, when wondering whatever happened to Post and Gos and were they ever definitives?!

Postscript:

Of course, Royal Mail's site announces that it is 'unavailable' when I try to pay for the items this evening! Typical. It's not a good site at all for collectors. Poor images and terrible navigation.

New Great Britain Machin site and lists now published!

It's taken some long nights to get this far but, at last, the new AHI Machin Catalogue is available on-line. take a look at ahi2000.com/machin and you'll have access to lists for each of the main areas I have updated.

The £sd Machins definitives aren't there yet but I'm working on them. The only other section to be added is the small format 'Smilers' which are neither Machin nor definitive but I reckon they need to be there for some reason best known to myself.

This has been a massive task and I may have made a few mistakes along the way which I hope either I'll spot soon enough or someone out there will tell me about.

There are links to the resources that I have found particularly useful and, whether you're new to all this and just starting out on the Machin road or pretty experienced and just want a quick checklist that is easy to view on-line, then I hope you find it a helpful site and catalogue.

2012 issues

A much more modest and pretty display for 2012, and this is one year I am so glad that I'm not collecting commemoratives or either Jubilee or Olympics themed stamps. In addition, there have been massive issues covering the nation A-Z as well as the usual selection of the weird and the wonderful. probably a wedding too, I can't remember.

Illustrations and details again with acknowledgements to Robin Harris and that's where the links on images and some items go where you can get loads more wonderful detail. I don't know the guy but I like him and reckon that if I ever go to Canada I would simply have to look him up. Perhaps when I have finally caught up, like I almost have now, and start adding my own images and the pictorial Regionals and other bits and pieces he doesn't cover, this blog might be something he lands on one day and he'll come and sample my coffee.

Whilst on the topic of good old' boys, I should mention the folk at B Alan Stamps. Way back in the 1970s I had an account with them which bore the number 8111. That kinda looked like Hill, my surname in the then computer font used which I quite liked but that's not the reason for mentioning them now. They had this distribution service whereby every few months a brown envelope would arrive stuffed with little opaque envelopes and card and in the little envelopes were varieties of Machins - printers, phosphors, perforations, head types etc that the Harrison issues, in particular, produced. These were almost impossible to get on your own as the Philatelic Bureau only dealt with the basic issues. Circumstances led to my having to drop out of that for several years and I missed all the goings on around the later 80s and early 90s which was most frustrating and it cost me a fortune to get all the necessary items later. I've been meaning to get some automatic service going again for a while now instead of looking at dealers' sites for what I seem to have missed, albeit not as much as used to be the case with the Bureau now doing a lot more than they did.

I just put B Alan into Google and, sure enough, not only were they still around but they had a decent-ish site and, most delightfully, publish a free catalogue called The Connoisseur of Machins catalogue. This is a work i progress but well done to them for what they've produced so far. Pages are in massive PDF files which can be a bit of a drag but you can, at least download them and browse through them at your leisure. Thoroughly recommended. Much more detailed thatn many people will need, which is why I think my own catalogue will still have its uses for those seeking a simple checklist without wanting to do what I have had to - scour bulletins, blogs and sites for information.

I have now enrolled again so hope that from here on, I shall have their regular news which, in addition to Robin's, Norvic's and the Bulletin, will be sufficient material from which I can select my version of what I suggest you collect, look out for, try and track down from here on.

I should also have time, at long last, to maintain this blog and my listings properly and will welcome any contributions from readers too to make this as informative and useful as possible.

I am currently working on the web site to feature the listings and will probably use Google Sheets to display the lists so that they can be readily updated. It's just a matter of making it all look reasonably attractive and legible. My purpose in doing all this is not commercial but to help collectors old and new. I don't sell stamps but I am happy to advise on portfolios for investment or to acquire items on behalf of others and would use the services of those I've mentioned and whose resources I've used to catch up to do so.

Right, so here's what 2012 brought us...

10 January 2012

68p security (no slits), 2p (new printer) and 10p (new printer)

25 January 2012

Security Machins
68p sea green self-adhesive with '12' code
76p bright pink self-adhesive with '12' code

Not yet seen (may or may not appear before April rate change):
£1.10 lime green self-adhesive with '12' code
£1.65 sage green self-adhesive with '12' code

6 February 2012

Diamond Jubilee
souvenir sheet
O security print
B security print
T security print

Various 2012

1st diamond jubilee
S security print
C security print

£1 ruby
12 security print

1st gold
T + 12 security print

2nd light blue
B + 12 security print
T + 12 security print
R + 12 security print

2nd Large light blue
12 security print
B + 12 security print
F + 12 security print

6 February 2012

Diamond Jubilee Machin miniature sheet.

27 March 2012

Diamond Jubilee
1st Large

25 April 2012

New rate-change definitives in self-adhesive format with security slits and code

Post and Go news

February brought a Jubilee 'over'print option and on December you could choose a BPMA (British Museum of Postal Archives) 'over'print. I am guessing that with two types of machines in operation these must be available in two styles each and for the increased range of 6 denominations. That's another 12 to the list by the seems of it and I wouldn't mind betting that we'll discover a bundle of variations on the theme too!

I am beginning to wonder whether those 'over'prints are actually something I need to collect. I don't want them - it would be merely a case of feeling that I needed to. They do have a whiff of 'commemorative' about them. But then, what would my reaction be to, heaven forbid, Machin definitives being overprinted with this or that? Just as I felt obliged to get the Boots panes I may well feel obliged again. Let's hope that doesn't arise. If these things do start getting either numerous of somewhat limited as to where people can get them then I shall think again. For ow, they'll remain on the list and I hope someone can find them for me as there's no machine anywhere near here! I must check with Edinburgh - they're probably on a basic order list if I were to look. Or no doubt Mr Alan and staff will help.

Right, that's it. Thanks for reading and hope you get a flavour now of what I'm doing and will follow future (more original) posts in future.

You can also follow me on Twitter soon. Look out for the link in the sidebar. I'll be something like @StampCollector or @31ppurple - haven't decided yet.