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Saturday 4 April 2020

£2 Postal Vehicles Series




Due to the current Covid-19 virus situation I have been in semi lock down since 13th March. This has given me many extra hours to enjoy and examine my Machin collections.

Yesterday I took the opportunity to scan through a stock book holding £1 and £2 Decimal Folded Machine Booklets of which I hold a vast amount of and it is still incomplete.

Armed with my copy of The MCC Machin Catalougue I set to work examining The £2.00 Postal Vehicles booklets. A series of three that were first issued in November 1993 - September 1994. They needed a good sort out and now I have the time to do it.

I knew that I had some miss cut booklets in this collection and a few plain and cylinder booklets I also knew that some of them had panes having missing pin holes.

All the stamps in these booklets were printed by Harrisons on OFPP they have PVAD gum and contain 8 x 25p Salmon Pink Machin definitives. This was the 1st class rate at the time.

To start,  firstly I separated them into lots, numbers 1, 2 and 3. Then I separated the plain and cylinder panes. I removed those that were miss cut in issue 1 and  made a separate pile of those.

I then checked all of them and made notes by determining which perf type each had. This is where the MCC catalogue comes into its own. They reference four different perf types. I1, E1d, E1e and E1f.

Now 1993 - 1994 was a long time ago so re discovering this era took me a little by surprise. I had leaned so much in the past and now after all this time so much forgotten.

Starting with issue number one ( Motorised Cycle Carrier) I have 6 plain and three with cylinder B3. Add to this three miss cuts two of them plain and one cylinder B3, as it is miscut the B3 is top right of the pane rather than the norm of top left.

Here is a full list of issue one, If it has a tick I have it in my collection


I1 plain /
E1d plain /
I1 plain blind hole between stamps 3 & stamp 4 /
E1e plain /
E1 Plain blind hole left of stamp 3 /
E1f plain
E1 plain blind hole right of stamp 4 /
I1 cyl B3 /
E1d cyl B3
E1e cyl B3
I1 cyl B3 blind hole left of stamp 3 /
I1 cyl B3 blind hole right of stamp 4 /


Above left blind hole between stamp 3 & 4

Miss cuts

I1 Plain /
E1f plain
E1e plain
I1 plain blind hole between 3 &4 /
I1 cyl B3 blind hole on right /
I1 cyl B3 blind hole between 3 & 4
E1f cyl B3

Issue 2 Experimental Motor Van (April 94) and 3 Experimental Electric Mail Van (September 94) do not have any miss cut booklets listed in the MCC book.  Besides that I only have one plain copy of both and these are perf I1.




Although these two booklets are both listed with blind holes in the different positions I do not own any at this time. Something for me to work on at a later date. The full list and catalogue values of all these can be found in the MCC and Bookmark Catalogues.

Check your copies people, you may have something of value (up to £200) just sitting there waiting to be discovered.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for advice. Discovered a cyl miscut booklet with normal perfs. Blind between 3-4. Cat value £100.00.

Great blog, will visit again.

Mike Rush

Paul Cronin said...

Welcome back. I've missed this blog and do so enjoy it.

Paul Cronin