Archive for the ‘British Postage Stamps’ Category

Speedy G.B. Christmas Stamp Identifier

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Do you sort British commemorative stamps to put into an album or stock book?

How long does it take searching through hundreds of pictures in a stamp catalogue to find to which year a particular stamp or set belongs?

The British Christmas stamps are the worst with 212 stamps making 44 sets from 1966 to 2009.  Just look at these two Christmas stamps, can you tell which years they come from?

example-22pexample-8p

Kollectomania have developed a method of quickly and simply identifying any British Christmas stamp or set.  This is available for you to download free.

These stamps and most other Great Britain stamps can be viewed or purchased at www.kollectomania.co.uk

The site has a selection of stamped and pre-stamp postal history as well as a large range of high quality mint and fine used postage stamps from the 1840 penny black to modern commemorative issues. You can also find first day covers, stamp booklets, booklet panes, cylinder blocks, printing errors and a number of unusual stamp related items.

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Collectors stories 1

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

In 1962 the United States post office issued a stamp to honour the U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. During the printing process one sheet got turned around so that the yellow printing was inverted.  A stamp collector, Leonard Sherman, spotted the error at his local Post Office and bought the whole sheet for $2, expecting to make a lot of money from it. When the Postmaster General heard about it he ordered another forty million stamps to be printed with the error so that the original sheet was worth no more than the correctly printed stamps.

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Postage stamps to go?

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

For nearly 170 years postage stamps have been used to show that payment has been made to send a letter.  Is this now considered inefficient?  Does Royal Mail want to phase out stamps as a method of pre-payment for postal services?
All the Post Offices are now using sticky labels instead of stamps unless you ask for stamps to be used.  The Post Offices are no longer supplied with stamps above £1 in value.  Values up to £5 are available in complete sheets from Royal Mail.  Royal Mail encourages its customers to buy postage online: print your own postage. Ebay online auction encourages users to print their own postage with a link to Royal Mail.
When asked about this Royal Mail said that they have no plans to stop using postage stamps.
But I wonder how long it will be before we have to buy booklets of self adhesive bar codes or pass our parcels under a laser recording vending machine whilst paying with a smart card.
What do you think?

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British Design Classics stamps by Royal Mail

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

Royal Mail has recently issued British Design Classics, a set of 10 stamps commemorating several very special creations that the British have given to the world. The tribute covers innovations like the mini car, the mini skirt, the Spitfire, Concorde, the Routemaster double decker bus, the K2 Telephone Kiosk, and the London Underground map. It also includes a few less iconic items such as Polypropylene chair, the anglepoise lamp and Penguine books.

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