A Change In the Wind?

Most of the forums and blogs have been a little quiet of late, not that there is no news to report, I guess people are busy doing other chores, the wife has had me at it non stop spring cleaning for one! I have managed to get a little respite today, she has gone to the hairdressers.

I was intrigued to read a note from Brian Sinnott who implied that there may be a change of code for Machins appearing in custom retail booklets in the near future. I had heard a whisper of this sometime ago, but dismissed it.


Brian says "Wait until you see the one in the Thomas retail booklet! They will break all the rules so far... And the '11' is nothing to do with the year of printing as you will see some '12's before too much longer."

I am not so sure about the year code, but we could see a change in the wording of the overprint.

Ian Billings on his blog gives a little more insight into what may or may not be forth coming.

"It is quite possible that 2010 or 2011 versions of the 50p & £1 workhorses will appear, and if usage of the Special Delivery stamps has been better than anticipated they may need a reprint as well before the end of this year.

And then there is innovation. There have been suggestions that forthcoming mixed retail booklets may have an innovation in the security overprint, possibly to indicate from which edition they come. So will we see 'THOMAS' or 'OLYMPIC' in the overprint? Remember the original purpose of the source code was to assist Royal Mail Production should there be any operational problems when the stamps were used."