New issues -
🇬🇧 Royal Mail -
27 November 2025 - The stamps of Queen Victoria - 8 stamps issued in 2 se-tenant strips of 4 (cost £13.60), 1 miniature sheet containing 4 different stamps (£6.80), 1 booklet containing 4 x self-adhesive Penny Black design stamps, photogravure printed (£6.80), 1 Prestige booklet containing 4 panes including 1 pane of Charles III definitives - 2 x 1p, 1 x 20 and 1 x £3.40 - (£25.35) and 1 ‘Collectors sheet’ containing 10 stamps (1 each of 6 stamps and 2 each of the other two stamps (£18.20). Designed by Steers McGillan Eves and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 14. This issue was described and shown in Blog 2825 but more details and better quality illustrations are included here.
Total cost of the above - £70.85!
And with this issue I will finally stop buying UK new issues - I considered stopping last year but this plethora of 2025 issues with miniature sheets , prestige booklets and collectors sheets has finally made up my mind to quit. I will now concentrate on the modern Baltic states issues - relatively cheap , only a few issues a year and many of these single stamp sets.
ReplyDeleteWK -replying. Wise decision. I believe the first issue next year will be another monster.
ReplyDeleteYes I will be now contacting the Philatelic Bureau to change my subscription. I had already cut down, but I may just send for 1 set with no MS and other products. I wrote to the CEO of Royal Mail and got frankly a pathetic reply justifying their issuing policy as "encouraging new collectors". Do they really believe this?
ReplyDeleteIn many ways they probably do believe it. The issue is that loyalty means very little to them. If they produce an issue and it’s popular then they hope some will turn into collectors. The issue is that in the process they lose collectors that have been customers for decades. I wonder if anybody at Royal Mail looks at the number of subscribers and the amount of money they bring in? Of course there are many who leave their subscriptions as set and forget
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