1682. 🇬🇧 What Lies Over The Horizon? Post Office Posters From The Postal Museum.

2nd Class Large Letter Rate

🇬🇧 The COVID-19 nightmare and its effects on society and public services have emphasised to me at least just how much the need for postage stamps is changing. As I sit at home for most of the day I find myself sending for more and more goods via internet sites and therefore my growing experience of the postman’s vaguely daily visit is not so much that of receiving letters (who needs to communicate by written mail when you can have virtual instant face to face conversations with almost everyone using Zoom?) but more of him (and my regular postmen are male) knocking on the door with a parcel to deliver. And the payment of the fee for carriage and delivery of these parcels is mostly not indicated by any conventional postage stamps plastered on the front on these parcels but by the unlovely but completely practical Horizon labels which really are just a modern form of postage stamp with bespoke variable values (they are gummed (or self-adhesive to be accurate) pieces of paper affixed to the item to be delivered by the postal services which indicate the prepayment of the item’s carriage and delivery fee).
  I have a little section in my ‘Great Britain’ collection for displaying some of the Horizon labels/stamps I have received on mail over recent years and it’s really quite interesting and in reality much more relevant to illustrating the sticky bits of paper actually used on mail in Britain in 2020 than any of the expensive ‘special stamps’ depicting American comics characters and science fiction television programmes which Royal Mail continue to pour out. What I don’t really understand is why the Royal Mail hasn’t caught on to the idea of having more interesting designs for the Horizon labels/stamps illustrating, perhaps, British wildlife or commemorating Moments in British History on them. That would make collectors of British Stamps sit up and take more notice.
  In the last few days I have received the following examples attached to various packages and parcels. Notably I have not received any mail sent from a non-philatelic source for well over a year, possibly even two or three years, with any Royal Mail Collectable stamps attached to it:-

2nd Class Small Parcel rate

1st Class Small Parcel rate

2nd Class Small Parcel rate with 4 x 1st Machin Head Definitives

  Which begs the question of what is the point of collecting stamps which are rarely used or even available to be used on ordinary mail? - many small local post offices are not allowed by the Post Office to stock new ‘special’ stamps and some larger post offices are allowed to stock only some values from the large sets of 10 stamps of which so many Royal Mail special sets are made up. As for miniature sheets, Prestige booklets and Collectors sheets, they are just a nonsense now mostly obtainable only from what we used to call the Philatelic Bureau.
  I won’t answer these questions. But it is hard sometimes not to think that the purchase of new stamp issues, particularly ‘special issues’, is a gross waste of money.
  I returned to these thoughts after receiving an email from The Postal Museum which included a reminder of some of the items it has for sale. I particularly like the large series of historic GPO and Post Office posters and photographs which it offers for sale as reprints on demand. Of course they’re not as exciting as the original posters themselves about which I know virtually nothing but which I suppose to be very rare but many of the items are extraordinarily interesting and some by notable artists and commercial designers. It’s well worth taking a look at The Postal Museum shop’s internet site to view these items spanning many decades and if tempted to purchase one of them. The buyer can be satisfied to know that they are buying an item to support the museum and which tells the buyer more about the British postal service than a ‘Deluxe’ limited edition Prestige booklet commemorating an ephemeral piece of trendy contemporary culture and sold at an excruciatingly inflated price ever will. And they will also have an attractive item to decorate their home.
  These posters and photographs would make a wonderful subject for a set of ‘special’ stamps for Royal Mail to issue as part of telling its and the Post Office’s own stories and as publicity for the Postal Museum as well as depicting British commercial art, some of which is fantastically good, of the past century.
Here are some of my favourites:-

‘The counter clerk’ by Joseph Ramsey Wherrett c.1955 -

‘The King’s Messenger AD 1481’ and ‘The Postman AD 1935’ by John Armstrong, 1 of a series of posters produced for schools showing the development of postal services through the ages -

Cover of The Post Office Magazine, May 1939. The subject seems to be socially distancing, 1939 style or else it’s a twist on Romeo and Juliet.

‘Correct addressing, Betws-y-Coed’ (North Wales), by Ronald Maddox, September 1966 - 

‘Correct addressing, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh by Margery Clinton -

‘Correct addressing, Bassenthwaite, Keswick, Cumberland’ by Anthony Rossiter - 

Untitled by Vanessa Bell. No date stated but this is very nostalgic for me as it reminds me of when I was a small boy in the 1950s and being taken by grandmother to our local small post office and all the older local people standing at the counter gossiping and the whole process taking an inordinately long time - 

‘Country Postman’ by Jesse Collins, 1955

Cover of Post Office Magazine, April 1966 - 

Cover of Post Office Magazine, May 1947 - 

Artwork for poster, date not stated but looks very like the 1930s -

And my favourite, poster promoting letter box regulations by Ronald Searle, 1962. - 

  A quick scrutiny of E Bay suggests that some of the original posters are sought after if some the asking prices are anything to go by. Thus Anthony Rossiter’s Bassenthwaite poster is currently offered for sale at £220 and John Armstrong’s Postman 1935 is on sale for a remarkable US$2150! Clearly original posters are not a collecting area to casually dabble in without having a good deal of knowledge on the subject before doing so

Addendum.

This is a response to Norvic’s comment below which is very interesting. Unfortunately I can’t get Blogger to accept my own reply comments so this is my only way of responding. If anyone does leave a comment anytime, I thank them in advance for taking the trouble. Comments are always appreciated as they are usually interesting and it’s pleasing to know that someone reads the Blog. Please forgive me if I do not always make a reply.

Thank you Ian for your comment. I have corrected the sentence about branding of Horizon labels and thank you for pointing it out. I quite agree with you about the attraction of commemorative Post and Go stamps. Up until the recent virus problem I regularly visited the kiosk in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust gift shop at Stratford upon Avon. It was a forlorn site. Recently out of action a lot of the time and generally unnoticed by the hoards of tourists in the shop. In the whole time since it has been installed I have never been there when someone else has been using it apart from its first day of operation when a couple of collectors or dealers were obtaining stamps. To be honest if you didn’t already know that it dispensed stamps it would have been hard to work out what it was doing in there.
  The stamps dispensed there really had nothing to do with Shakespeare although occasionally additional inscriptions were applied but rather randomly. There were never any special inscriptions for Shakespeare’s birthday week available for use by the thousands of potential postcard senders in the town at those times.
  For the past 6 years or so the Royal Shakespeare Theatre has been working its way through the entire canon and some clever fellow might have come up with the idea of dispensing a new Shakespeare Birthplace Post and Go issue to coincide with the opening of each new play (which have ranged from marvellous productions of Love’s Labour’s Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night and The Tempest to the incredibly dire Romeo and Juliet and Taming of the Shrew). Apparently the RSC and the Birthplace Trust do not get along with each other otherwise we could have Post and Go stamps featuring actors and scenes from great productions at the theatre (I suppose featuring deceased great performers would not pose a problem). Scenes from around the town, portraits of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Elizabethan England are all subjects which could have been used to increase the interest of a mail-sending public but all we get are the heraldic flowers designs interminably. The town, at normal times, and with it the gift shop is bursting with tourists from home and away. What a wasted opportunity.

1674. 🇬🇮 New Gibraltar Definitives.

🇬🇮 Royal Gibraltar Post Office is planning to issue a set of 10 definitive stamps on 25 June 2020. The design featuring the territory’s coat of arms is not terribly interesting especially as each stamp is in a single colour but it may be that the stamps themselves look rather better than the publicity illustrations suggest. The designs are by Stephen Perera and the stamps were lithographed by Cartor. Rating:- ***.

🇬🇬 Guernsey Post is now featuring on its internet Stamp and Collectables site two of the winning designs from its COVID-19 Children’s art competition. One of the illustrations depicts a stamp inscribed Alderney of which there will be a total of four and the other is inscribed Guernsey which will be part of a set of 8. 

  It looks as though the site is about to publish full details of the issue but a ‘READ MORE’ indicator on the site currently leads no more.

Addendum - reply to Norvic’s comment below. Thank you Norvic, I agree with everything you say in your comment, as always. To be fair about the 60p stamp it may be that the illustration does not accurately reflect what the real stamp looks like so it will be good to see what the stamp looks like in the flesh, so to speak. Many of Gibraltar’s stamp designs are undistinguished and unmemorable using just a not always well chosen photograph and manipulating it on a computer and adding a bit of lettering. There are far too many issues from Gibraltar and most of them add nothing of interest to one’s collection.

1672. 🇵🇬 News From Papua New Guinea.

🇵🇬 Some details of new issues have now appeared on the Post PNG (Papua New Guinea) internet site but some without illustrations. Two issues, it appears, are planned for the end of May 2020:-

6 March 2020 - Surcharges on previously issued APEC 2018 issue - 4 values. K1.60 on K6.80 (Partnership), K1.60 on K6.80 (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation); K5 on K3.40 (Peace) and K6.90 on K3.40 Prosperity. Surcharging carried out by Star printers.

6 March 2020 - Surcharges on previously issued 2016 Tuna industry issue - 3 values. K1.60 on K2 (Bluefin tuna) and K5 on K1.45 (Yellowfin tuna) and K6.90 on K1.45 (Yellowfin tuna).

27 May 2020 - ‘50th anniversary of Nation Building, the Post Courier’ - 4 stamps and 2 miniature sheets, one containing a single stamp and the other containing 4 stamps. Designed by Tania Peter of the Post Courier and lithographed by Southern Colour Print.

27 May 2020 - Breadfruit - 4 stamps and 2 miniature sheets (one containing a single stamp and the other containing 4 stamps. Designed by Post PNG Philatelic Production and lithographed by Henan Post Printing, China.

🇲🇺 So far in 2020 there have been no new stamp issues from Mauritius Post and it seems that post offices have been closed due to the COVID-19 infection. However Mauritius Post reopened post offices from 15 May 2020 and so we will have to wait to see what results and whether or not there will some new stamp issues soon.

🇰🇳 The post offices of the postal service of St Kitts And Nevis are open but working on reduced hours. The Philatelic Bureau there though remains closed - “The Bureau sells philatelic items such as collector’s stamps to tourists and stamp dealers. Mr Dario Gill [the Postmaster General] noted that the St Kitts and Nevis borders remain closed eliminating the main customer base of the Bureau”.
  I find the use of the term “collector’s stamps” to be interesting - it suggests, as we know to be true in so many countries now, that the Post Office recognises a difference between stamps for postage and stamps for collectors. That is an important point for collectors who have since the 1860s been collectors of ‘postage stamps’ - do they really want to be buyers of (often very expensive) ‘collector’s stamps’ which may be used for postage in theory but which the postal administrations issuing them actually think of as something quite distinct from postage stamps? Perhaps those collectors who still spend a lot of money on new issues might want to use this time of enforced restricted activities to consider their plans for the future of their collections and which modern products are to be added to them.

1671. 🇮🇪 COVID-19 Postcards Distributed To Irish Householders.

🇮🇪 Further to my mention of the Coronavirus-related postcards distributed by the postal services of Gibraltar, Jersey and the Isle Of Man to their respective residents (see Blog 1670), Brian Warren very kindly contacted me to tell me about similar items which had been produced and distributed by An Post, the postal service of the Republic Of Ireland, to all households in that country.
  Each household received one each of two different postcards, as illustrated below, and were titled, ‘Come Together - Write Now’ and have a postage paid imprint at the upper right corner of the card which is valid for use to all addresses in the island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland. The cards, which were also freely available in post offices and delivery offices, were produced in A4 format containing the different A5 cards so that the cards had to be separated by the user before sending them through the mail. Interesting items especially for those building up a Coronavirus collection. I particularly like the design depicting two socially distanced cottages - it could only depict a scene from Ireland, I think it’s a wonderful piece of graphic art and would have made a excellent stamp design.

  Brian also sent me one or two other snippets of news from Ireland. He pointed out that, as he had published in the December 2019 edition of Irish Philately, post office stamp kiosks, which had been withdrawn from use in 2015, had been reintroduced to dispense SOAR stamps. The stamps used in the kiosks were the same as those sold at counters but the inscriptions have new fonts and details. This is particularly interesting to Post and Go collectors. I shall have to ask contacts in Ireland to write to me to hopefully receive some of these new-formatted stamps.

  Brian has also messaged me saying that the An Post new issue programme is being reviewed and some issues may be postponed until 2021. He also says that it is not yet known whether the next instalment of SOAR definitive stamps due for issue in the summer of 2020 will now go ahead.

  Very many thanks to Brian for all this information and his permission to allow me to pass it on and use his illustrations.

🇬🇧 I have now obtained the first two Royal Mail Machin Head reprints of 2020 in the counter stamp range with the M20L MAIL codes. They are the 1st Large Signed For stamp and the Special Delivery up to 500g value. No doubt there will be plenty more M20L Definitives where these came from by the end of the year. In his indispensable Norvic Philatelics Blog Ian Billings reports that these were printed in February 2020, the Large Signed For being printed on 3 February and the Special Delivery being printed on 4 February.
  Today, Ian also reports that a third of these M20L Definitives has been put on sale - the 2nd Class  rate from Business sheets with code M20L MBIL.

1670. 🇮🇲🇯🇪 More Coronavirus Postcards.

🇮🇲 The Isle Of Man Post Office has used its 8 #Carry Us Through stamps as a basis for a postage paid post card which it delivered to all homes in the island during the week beginning Monday 11 May 2020 which “can be used to send a message to anyone anywhere in the world, completely free of charge, courtesy of IOMPO”. The postcard was delivered along with a leaflet which provides information about the recently formed Manx Solidarity Fund.

  Unfortunately I have not seen an illustration of the reverse of the card and so I do not know if it has a ‘stamp’ printed at the upper right.

🇯🇪 Up until now I have overlooked a similar item which Jersey Post distributed to homes in the island and which could be used throughout April 2020. The card is part of Jersey Post’s Connecting Jersey campaign “to encourage people to stay in touch during the Coronavirus pandemic”. Publicity stated that, “...with so many people working hard to keep Jersey moving, fed, cared for, and safe, the postcards will be a way to thank those individuals”.

  The obverse of the card has an illustration saying ”THANK YOU” in white lettering on a rainbow-coloured background and on the obverse is a printed ‘stamp’ depicting a rainbow with the Queen’s head at the upper right, ‘JERSEY’ at the upper left and ‘FREE’ below the rainbow.

🇱🇰 The COVID-19 stamp which was mentioned in a previous Blog and which was claimed to be expected to be released by the postal service of Sri Lanka during April 2020 is reported to have been a hoax perpetrated by a local philatelic dealer. 

🇲🇾 Pos Malaysia issued a personalised My Stamp-type sheetlet (Setem ku) containing 10 stamps (in three different designs) on 13 May in relation to the Aidil Fitri celebration. The item is sold for a premium price of RM25 even though the total face value is only RM6.