New issues -
🇬🇧 Royal Mail -
12 June 2025 - 350th anniversary of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich - 6 stamps (3 se-tenant pairs, all 1st Class domestic rate) (cost £10.20),1 miniature sheet containing 4 different stamps (cost £6.80) and 1 Prestige booklet (cost £24.79) containing 4 panes, one of which is a pane of 4 King Charles III definitives (2 x 2nd Class & 2 x 50p values). Designed by Steers McGillen Eves and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 14.5.The definitive pane is self-adhesive & printed in gravure. Rating:- .*****.
🇯🇪 Jersey Post -
5 May 2025 - EUROPA, Archaeological discoveries - 1 miniature sheet containing 2 stamps inscribed ‘EUROPA’ (part of set of 6 - see Blogs 2701 and 2706). This item has not previously been reported here. Lithographed by bpost.
Yet another disappointing Royal Mail issue.
ReplyDeleteDisappointing, that is, not because of the content - the Royal Observatory stamps make a very good set, and (for once) not a brazenly exploitative populist subject - but because, yet again, all of the stamps are 1st class only.
When Royal Mail announced that, thenceforth, all special stamp issues (except for Christmas) would abandon both airmail stamps and non-tariff stamps (esp. £1 and £2) and comprise only standard 1st and 2nd class stamps, I naïvely thought that I could look forward to regular pictorial offerings at both price points. (Silly me!)
You should remember that many stamps are printed well before the issue date (which allows for emergency issues being slotted in without delaying others). It is quite likely that these were printed before the announcement was made. The Mushroom stamps are 5 each 2nd & 1st.
ReplyDeleteMaybe so but, if they were - as you say - printed so very far in advance (i.e. implying that such printing was before the decision to limit special stamps to NVIs), then there would have been more variety than just 1st-class only since the announcement.
DeleteIf Royal Mail had the foresight to print 1c only issues, they could just as easily have included 2c as well.