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Friday 13 April 2012

Machin News, The Long Wait

With new postal rates pending Royal Mail kept it quiet (and us in the dark) for a long time as to what the actual new rates and colours would be. In actual fact why was it was such a big secret? No one seems to know. They were actually printed in early February, long, long before the official announcement.



Now after what seems to be a lifetime, we know that three new Machin definitive stamps with values of 87p, £1.28 and £1.90 will now be issued 25th April 2012.

We heard rightly from Douglas Mayall that the colours will be Orange for the 87p value, Emerald Green for the £1.28p value and Rhododendron for the £1.90p.


News of a fourth value (previously announced in some quarters) was described as a 50p Rust, this seems to have been canceled. It is not included in the new Machin Presentation pack, which Ian shows on his blog this week.

It could be this 50p Rust may be issued later in the year when stocks of the current 50p Grey are exhausted. Your guess is as good as mine. If we hear of anything more you can be sure that we will let you know.

Still no news of the elusive £1.10 and £1.65 counter sheets that were indeed printed with M12L at the same time as the 76p.

Douglas informed us that the £1.10p were sent to many post offices in January and the £1.65p has been supplied to Tallents House, so perhaps they will show their faces soon. Keep em peeled and let us know if you hear anything or come in contact with any.

Some late news: Ian reports a new find of the 1st class gold from booklets of 12 with M12L code.

6 comments:

machinmaniac said...

I had heard a rumour that the current 50p was going to be withdrawn from post offices. The problem is that, although it pays the correct rate for a second class stamp, it has two phosphor bands and so would presumably go through the sorting machinery as a first class stamp.

Anonymous said...

Royal Mail's announcement came right after an announcement from Ofcom about the new regulatory scheme, so it appears Royal Mail was waiting for them. Why Ofcom took so long is another matter.

--Larry

Anonymous said...

Another question is why even issue these three values at all? As Douglas Myall reminds us in his latest report, there are NVIs for these services. If the stamps are needed in sheet format (in addition to booklets of four), why not issues the NVIs in sheets and be done with it?

--Larry

Anonymous said...

So if the current 50p has two phosphor bands, the new one will have a centre bar? Interesting.

Ian - Norvic said...

Larry mentioned the NVIs.

Well the booklets of 4x 20g and 4 x postcard were withdrawn on 31.03.12 from Tallents House although there may be some still in post offices.

I bought 3 packets of 20g Europe to keep my charges to customers' down.

Ian - Norvic said...

@Anonymous - centre band 50p is what we announced on 5 Feb http://norphil.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/jubilee-definitives-part-2-and-change.html and I'm sure Ray mentioned it.