Britain Alone Machin Pane

I am so pleased that Machin Mania attracts others who are well known in this field of philately.

As well as Larry, and David, we have other experts who visit and reply to posts on a regular basis.

Many thanks go to Robert Bostock (MBPC) who has sent me a larger picture of the Machin pane (1) from The Britain Alone Prestige Booklet.

Now that I can actually see the stamps without the fuzz, I notice the 5p values on this image have reverted back to the Matthews font.

The Deegam Handbook & CD

I was intrigued to read in Deegam Report (86) a hard copy of the 2nd edition of the Deegam handbook sold on eBay recently. According to Douglas it attracted several bidders and eventually sold for around the £52.00 mark plus £5 postage.

I actually prefer books to Cd's and was hoping against the odds that a new hard copy may be issued one day.

I recently asked Douglas if he intended re publishing "The Handbook" in the near future. If like myself were holding out from buying the CD version, in the hope of a new hard back here is his reply.

"The Handbook now runs to more than 2000 pages and commercial printing is no longer feasible. I would never recover the costs of printing and it would be out of date as soon as Royal Mail issued another of their "products".

The CD files are in colour, are easy to maintain and worldwide postage is very low compared with that for a 2 or 3-binder book weighing nearly 5 kilograms. These savings are passed on to collectors as the whole thing costs only £39 and worldwide airmail postage is free.

The CD is updated every 10 weeks and is burned to order so it is always up-to-date whenever it is brought under change scheme owners can return their CD for the latest version at a 50% discount as often as they like. All of the CD files are printable in colour at high resolution.
Many owners print the catalogue section for example."

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I can see the logic in this, so I have now decided to save my spare pennies and get myself a copy. I will still keep my hard copy, there is nothing like curling up with a good book. Besides this if someone was prepared to pay £52.oo in 2010, what will it be worth in 10 years time? :-)

As a long time Deegam fan I can attest you will not find a better read (or detailed information) on Machins anywhere else! The publication should not need plugging as it sells itself, to get your own a copy, visit www.deegam.com for more information.

You do not have to be an expert to get involved with this site, if you have a question, or need to get something off your chest this is the place to do it. May I also say without your emails comments and replies I could not continue to write as often as I do. Please do keep them coming!!