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Thursday 16 March 2017

Day Dreaming About Machins


I woke up this morning as usual thinking about Machins, mainly because I had a few lots finishing on eBay and knew I had to check on my sales and pack, then post the lots  which had been paid for.
This done, as usual when thinking about Machins I got a little distracted and started to imagine what Royal Mail may have in store for us for the next anniversary 1967 - 2017 which as we know will be (hopefully) something spectacular and is due to be commemorated in June of this year.
In my day dreams I remembered something of a previous anniversary that I had seen, I could not remember fully, but i thought I was on the Westminster Mint website. I went over to the site to refresh my memory and got distracted again when I found this .
"In 1972, just a year after Great Britain had made the switch to decimalisation, Royal Mail reissued the £1 Black with a redrawn value.

Thousands of these stamps were originally printed, the vast majority without a hitch. Those that had imperfections were spotted during rigorous production checks and promptly destroyed.
However, on rare occasions, some of these errors slip through the net and when they do they become highly sought after by eagle eyed dealers and collectors."
Westmister go on to say  
"Just how such an error could have arisen is a mystery. Whatever the reason, the result is a superb example of a scarce and sought after missing perforation error.".
Well we all know the answer to this one as it has been publicised that these sheets of stamps should have been destroyed and somehow were released to the open market.
Westminster point out that 
"Your 1972 imperforate pair of 1972 Machins is one of just 200 available. It will come housed in an archive quality presentation folder with a certificate of Authenticity."
At £80.00  a pop I can not say if this is a genuine investment but i have to admit it is certainly a nice item. It also seems fair to say that more than one sheet of these has  been found and sold as I have seen part sheets and pairs of stamps for sale on eBay.
Now where was I before i got distracted once again? Oh yes the 2017 Machin 50th Anniversary. This is now your turn to have a say. What would you like to see issued for this auspicious occasion?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...


If Royal Mail wanted to make a lot of money, why not re release all current Machins (including the New tariffs for April ) with a 50th Anniversary iridescent overprint??

This would bankrupt all Machin collectors and we could move on with a new design.

Anonymous said...

If I remember correctly, a collector in the UK much more knowledgable than I (he is, among other things, an FRPSL) told me that these imperfs were printer's waste and should be avoided like the plague. What lends credence to this is, as Roy mentions, there seem to be a lot of these around, and it is highly unlikely that many imperfs would be sold over the counter.
--Larry