Royal Mail’s Harry Potter Bonanza

Linn’s Stamp News reports in its August 20, 2007 issue that Royal Mail took 340,000 advance orders for its recent Harry Potter issue. This breaks the record of 300,000 orders set earlier this year by the Beatles issue.

As I stated previously, Royal Mail is maximizing its revenue from stamps and related items, so it is jumping on the bandwagon of popular topics. Apparently, their efforts are a huge success.

It’s a fair guess that nearly all of the advance orders included the set of stamps at £2.38 and the miniature sheet at £1.70. That’s more than £4 right there. Many no doubt included the generic (Smilers) sheet of 20 at £7.35, bringing the total to over £11. And then there are the stamp cards, first day covers, and presentation pack. And each of these orders includes a postage and handling fee.

I think it’s fair to guess that the advance orders totaled a minimum of £2 million, and there will be more sales over the next 12 months.

With a bonanza like that, does anyone really think that a petition signed by less than a thousand people will get Royal Mail to change its stamp issuing policy?

--Larry

Prestige Booklet Panes To Go All Litho

Royal Mail has announced that, effective at the beginning of next year, all panes in prestige booklets will be printed by lithography. For the past several years, panes containing Machins were printed by gravure, so this will create new Machin varieties for specialist collectors.

Of course, the Machins in prestige booklets often differ in some way from those produced in other formats, but the change from gravure to lithography is more significant. I think more collectors will be interested in variations of printing method than in other, less significant, differences.

However, although Royal Mail is making every effort to sell as many stamps to collectors as possible, as I noted recently, that's not the case this time. Rather, it's the other side of the coin - the change is a step to reduce production costs.

A lithographic printing plate is less costly to make than a gravure cylinder, so Royal Mail will have to pay less to the printer for these lithographed panes, thereby resulting in more profit. And, if some additional copies of these booklets are sold to specialist collectors, all the better for Royal Mail.

So if lithography plates are less expensive than gravure cylinders, why haven't prestige booklet panes been printed by lithography all along? In fact, why aren't all Machins printed by lithography?

I'll answer these questions by reviewing a little Machin history, and even a tiny bit of pre-Machin history.

Gravure printing was first introduced for British stamps in 1934 by Harrison and Sons. Starting that year, the low values of the King George V stamps were changed from the older printing method, called typography, to photogravure.

Photogravure remained the method used for low value definitives, including the first Machins in 1967 and the first decimal Machins in 1971.

In the late 1970s, the British Post Office decided that it should not depend on a single printer for all its low value Machins. In addition to long-time printer Harrison and Sons, two new firms started producing Machins. They were John Waddington, PLC and The House of Questa. Both of those companies printed Machins using lithography. A few years later, Walsall Security Print also started printing Machins by lithography.


The first lithographed Machins were pretty horrible. They were flat and lifeless compared to their photogravure siblings. Shown here are a lithographed 2p Machin printed by Questa in 1980 and a photogravure 2p Machin printed by Harrisons in 1971. I think you can easily tell that the lithographed Machin is on the left.

The technology improved, however. By 1988, the year in which the pane shown above was issued, the quality of the lithographed stamps was much better. However, it was still easy to distinguish a lithographed stamp from a photogravure one. (The pane is from the prestige booklet titled "The Story of the Financial Times." It was printed by Questa and issued on February 9, 1988. Another prestige booklet printed by lithography is shown by Roy here.)

After another five years, the difference in appearance between lithography and gravure stamps was minimal. (Around this time, the new enhanced gravure process, known as Electro-Mechanical Engraving, or EME, was introduced. This process is properly called 'gravure' rather than 'photogravure', since the photography step has been replaced by, what else?, a computer.)

In 1997, Royal Mail asked its printers to standardize on gravure and eliminate lithography, except for short print runs. The reason was the post office's old nemesis: counterfeiting. There are lots of lithographic presses in the U.K. and elsewhere, and it's easy to print phony stamps by that method. Gravure printing is much harder to do because there are only a few gravure presses.

The exception for short print runs is an acknowledgement that lithographic plates are less expensive to make. Gravure cylinders, however, last considerably longer than litho plates, so they are cost effective for stamps and panes that have large print runs.

I don't know if prestige booklet printing quantities have been shrinking, though I guess they have as the number of such booklets issued each year continues to increase.

In recent booklets, and the British Army Uniforms booklet to be issued on September 20, all the panes are printed by lithography except the pane containing Machins. So that Machin pane will be, for at least the foreseeable future, the last prestige booklet pane printed by gravure.

By the way, for some help in distinguishing stamps printed by lithography from those printed by gravure, visit Robin Harris' Machin site here and here.

--Larry

UPDATE: There's more on printing methods here.

Machin Collectors Club Launches StampMart Auction Site

There's no question that eBay has revolutionized stamp collecting. Overall, I think the revolution has been for the better, though there undoubtedly have been some casualties on the way. It has made a wealth of material easily available to the collector, and bargains can definitely be found.

eBay is not perfect for stamp collectors, though. Using eBay is definitely a case of caveat emptor. There are definitely fraudulent auctions, and I think even more auctions by people who don't know what they have and therefore write inaccurate descriptions and/or put unrealistically high prices on their lots.

The Machin Collectors Club has jumped into the fray and launched an internet auction site just for stamp collectors. It is called StampMart and is located at www.stampmart.org.uk. Only stamps and related items can be listed on the site.

It handles stamps of all countries, but at the moment, the vast majority of lots are Elizabethan Great Britain issues. That's not surprising since word went out first to members of the MCC. I expect that the offerings will become more balanced over time.

For buyers, the advantages are that there are no fees and that the site is moderated by dealers and other experts who are on the lookout for inaccurate or fraudulent listings.

For sellers, the advantages are no listing fees (but there are final valuation fees and optional enhancement fees), free image uploads, free relisting if the lot doesn't sell and free scheduled start times.

I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I have looked it over and it looks pretty good. Give it a try.

The Anniversary That Royal Mail Missed

As you undoubtedly have noticed, Royal Mail has been celebrating stamp-related anniversaries. The first, in what I will call recent times, was the 1990 celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Penny Black, Britain's (and the world's) first postage stamp. The celebration took the form of five revised Machins that included the usual Machin portrait of Queen Elizabeth II plus the portrait of Queen Victoria as used on the Penny Black (and all subsequent stamps of her reign). These five classy stamps, designed by Jeffery Matthews, were on sale for the first nine months of 1990.

A long break occurred, but now Royal Mail is serious about these celebrations. The first low-value definitives of the Elizabeth era are called Wildings, because the portrait of the Queen was taken by Dorothy Wilding Studies. The first Wildings appeared in 1952, and Royal Mail's celebration took the form of two souvenir sheets, one in 2002 and one in 2003. The sheets featured reprints of the original designs, except with the denominations updated to current, decimal values. (These updated Wildings also appeared in prestige booklets in 1998 and 2002.)

The first high-value definitives of the Elizabethan era featured views of four royal castles. These first appeared in 1955, and the four were reprinted in a souvenir sheet in 2005.

Most recently, the 40th anniversary of the Machin series was celebrated with a pair of commemoratives and a new ruby-colored £1 Machin.

Next September, Royal Mail will celebrate the 50th anniversary of country (or regional) definitives. Those are stamps that feature emblems of one of the four main countries that make up the United Kingdom (and early versions were issued for other countries as well). You can see the regional Machins issued in 1971 for the Isle of Man here.

So, with all those celebrations, it's pretty amazing that Royal Mail missed another one that they could celebrate. Just a few days ago, August 4th was the 20th anniversary of window booklets.

In 1987, Royal Mail wanted to expand the sale of stamps beyond post offices. It also wanted to have a common and recognizable format for all products that were sold outside post offices. To accomplish these goals, new booklets were introduced in 1987 to be sold by retailers to the public. The first booklets in this series had a bright red cover and a small laminated window allowing one of the stamps inside to show through. This feature gave rise to the term window booklets. One of the original booklets with a window, containing four 26p stamps, is shown at the top of this post.

The first window booklets had panes of 13p stamps for second-class service, 18p stamps for first-class service, or 26p stamps for overseas airmail postcards. Each booklet contained one pane. Five booklets were issued: four 13p stamps, ten 13p stamps, four 18p stamps, ten 18p stamps, and four 26p stamps. Harrison and Sons produced all of the booklets. As with all Harrison low-value stamps, the photogravure process was used.



An unusual feature of the panes in these booklets is that they had margins all around.

The next year, these were replaced with similar versions containing 14p, 19p and 27p Machins, since these were required by new postal rates. The booklets were very popular, but as the required quantity of booklets increased, it became apparent that the window was too expensive to retain. Also, once the stamp behind the window was removed, the visual indication of the contents of the booklet was lost.



Harrison and Sons produced the initial 14p, 19p and 27p booklets with windows, and The House of Questa also produced window booklets with panes of ten 14p and ten 19p stamps. Shortly thereafter, however, booklets started appearing with a facsimile of one of the stamps replacing the window. The margins around the panes were removed as well, and as a result, the new booklets were slightly smaller than the older ones.



No further booklets with actual windows were produced, but collectors have continued to call these "window" booklets, since they look very similar to the ones with real windows.

Even if you don't collect booklets, these early window booklets are important because they contain some stamps that were not available in any other way.



In 1987, Royal Mail was in the process of converting over to the new, narrower Matthews font for the numerals. The original 26p red Machins were issued in the older font, but the ones in the window booklets had the new font. In fact, these two stamps typify the reason why the new font was needed. Look at the 26p with the old font - the denomination just barely fit in the space alotted. The new font is much more pleasing.



Also, the late 1980s was the period in which Royal Mail intentionally had straight edges on its booklet panes. This was done in response to collector complaints that booklet panes were being badly trimmed, and Royal Mail thought that straight edges would look better than a closely trimmed perforated edge. As a result, many Machins appeared in window booklets with one or two straight edges, as on the 27p stamps shown here.

Incidentally, straight edges were discontinued in 1993 because Royal Mail felt that they made it easier for stamps to be counterfeited.

I don't know why Royal Mail didn't issue a new booklet with an actual window to celebrate this 20th anniversary. Maybe they will do it in 2012 for the 25th anniversary. We'll just have to wait and see.

--Larry

Another Machin Image

Below, Roy posted a beautiful image of the Machin head. Here's another image, a little unusual. This is the front of a post card promoting The British Postal Museum's exhibition entitled Timeless & Classic: Elizabeth Queen and Icon. The exhibit is located at the Royal Collect of Art until August 15. My thanks to TW for sending the card to me.

--Larry