1102. 🇻🇬 Beautiful New Fish Issue From The Virgin Islands.

  🇻🇬 The postal service of The British Virgin Islands will issue a beautiful set of 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet on 8 November 2017 as the second part of its Underwater Life series, the subject this time being Fish life. The stamps are highly attractive and gorgeously coloured and the photographs used for the designs are very well chosen. The issue was designed by Bee Design and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 13.5. The stamps are also printed in sheetlets of 20 providing 5 se-tenant strips each of 4 different stamps (see Comment below, there are actually 4 strips each of 5 different stamps!). Rating:- *****.

  Thanks to Juliet Warner for information about this issue.

  🇬🇧 Intelligent AR/Royal Mail has announced a plethora of "Poppy" Post and Go issues which are upcoming. This will be a new version of the stamp with code R17YAL.

  At the Postal Museum, Kiosk A001 will replace the Machin Head stamp from 1 to 24 October 2017 with the Poppy design.

  At The Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth, Kiosk A002 will dispense the Union Jack stamp with an additional "Trafalgar Day" inscription and the Poppy stamp will replace the Machin Head stamp from 20 October 2017.

  At the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, Kiosk A003 will dispense Poppy stamps instead of Union Jack Stamps from 20 October 2017.

  At the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Kiosk A004 will dispense Poppy stamps instead of Union Jack stamps from 20 October 2017.

  At the Royal Navy Museum HMS Trincomalee, Kiosk A006 will have 2 changes - the Machin Head stamp will be sold with the inscription "12th Oct 1817" to mark the Bicentenary of the launching of Trincomalee and the Poppy stamp will replace the Union Jack stamp from 20 October 2017.

  At the Royal Navy Museum of Naval Firepower in Gosport, Kiosk A007 will dispense the Poppy stamp instead of the Machin Head stamp from the 20 October 2017 and the Union Jack stamp will be dispensed with an additional "Trafalgar Day" inscription.

  For the Royal Corps Of Signals, Kiosk A011 will replace the Union Jack stamp with the Poppy stamp from 20 October 2017 and the Machin Head stamp will cease to have the "White Helmets" inscription and logo applied to it.

  IAR kiosks M001 (RAF Northolt), M002 (Mount Pleasant), M003 (Bradford), M004 (Kingston) M005 (Windsor), M006 (Doncaster), M010 (Norwich) and M011 (MOD Filton Abbey Wood Bristol) will dispense Poppy stamps instead of Union Jack stamps from 24 October 2017.

  NCR kiosks in ordinary post offices are also expected to dispense the new Poppy stamps from 24 October 2017.

  I think that this means that there will be at least 12 new Post and Go stamps produced by these changes (if all the Poppy stamps have the new code and if the collector just wants a single value of each stamp - if the collector wants a multivalue strip then that may well mean 72 new stamps at some unimaginable cost).

  🇳🇿 In Blog 1098 I mentioned the 5 gummed Christmas stamps which will be issued on 1 November 2017 by New Zealand Post. There will also be a gummed miniature sheet and 3 self-adhesive stamps ($1, $2.20c and $2.70c) sold in booklets for $10, $19.80c and $24.30c respectively. The designs are not very exciting. Rating:- **.