Birmingham Postmarks "You Cant Lick Em"

Today I am going to write about two first day covers, which may be of interest to you. Well I find them of interest as they both not only have Birmingham postmarks, but Birmingham postmarks with a difference.

The city of Birmingham, in the West Midlands, UK ( if you did not know ) is my place of birth and the city where I live at this time.

The first is a double cover that commemorates the first self adhesive postage stamps of Sierra Leone and the issue of the first trial self adhesive Machin to Britain on 19th October 1993.

Printed by Joh Enschede (gravure) in landscape format the stamps had 2 yellow phosphor bands printed on OFNP paper.

These were issued in booklets of 20, originally only sold in the Tyne Tees test area, but they were eventually made available to all collectors via Philatelic counters. These stamps were withdrawn after the trial, as they were found to be difficult to remove from the backing paper and the ink used to cancel them tended to be to easy to remove from the shiney surface.

Here is a just a bit of trivia for you. Did you know self adhesives were also issued originally by Sierra Leone as a trial to see if they could combat stamps sticking together due to the humidity?

Getting back on track:

The novel cancel on this cover is in the design of a protruding tongue with a postmark which has the appropriate name of LICKEY END.

Lickey End is a small village, part of a local national trust beauty spot( the Lickey Hills) on the edge of Birmingham.

This village is only a mile from my house in Rubery, Rednal. If you remember I wrote a small piece about the Lickey Hills last year in conjunction with Michael Dodds visit from Australia. Below a blow up of the postmark. ( sorry its a bit blurred )

The second cover (shown below) is to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Machin due for release in June this year. This has the cancellation of MACHIN ROAD, Erdington, Birmingham.

I do not know if the name of this road bears any relation to Arnold? But it Is possible, after all we have trains and pubs named after him :-)

This is also interesting to me as the cachet portrays Machin booklets, which is one of my Machin passions and specialities.

Another postmark which I wrote about last year was the Kings Head, a public house in Kings Heath, Birmingham.

This postmark was used locally to commemorate the Three Kings miniature sheet issued 31st August 2006. If you wish to refresh or take a look at the page here is a direct link. http://www.gbmachins.co.uk/html/stamps_on_stamps.html