Become a Friend of the BPMA

Many of us were saddened when the National Postal Museum closed at the end of 1998. I was lucky enough to have visited it twice. It was pure heaven for a GB collector.

The organization behind the museum floundered for a while, but then it was merged with the Postal Archives. The new organization was (and is) called the Postal Heritage Trust. A while later, the Trust decided that its name wasn't very friendly, so they adopted the public identity of the British Postal Museum & Archive, known as the BPMA. The BPMA has a web site here.

Bear with me, I'm getting to the Machins in a moment.

Back in 1985, an organization called the Association of Friends of the National Postal Museum was formed. It was a voluteer group that supported the museum and provided some benefits for its members.

That organization has now become the Friends of the BPMA. The Friends have a web page here that describes the benefits of membership.

One of those benefits is an excellent journal called Cross Post. The cover of the latest issue is shown above.

The journal is a full-size (A4, I think is your term), full-color magazine with articles about a variety of topics relating to British philately. And, in general, each issue has at least one article about Machins.

The Autumn 2007 issue has two, in fact.

One is titled The Machins in use by Michael H. Lockton. It is an overview of how to collect Machin postal history. It is well illustrated with over a dozen covers.

The other is Delving into the unknown by Don Staddon. Don is a long-time volunteer at the BPMA, working primarily on modern material. He is also an author of many articles about the Machins. In this article, he describes and illustrates some unissued material that is archived at the BPMA. Most striking, to me at least, is a sheet of booklet panes containing one 3p, two 14p and one 19p Machin each. These were printed in April 1988. These were intended for 50p booklets.

The actual issued panes had two 19p and one 14p Machins, along with a label. Staddon doesn't explain the reason for the change, but my guess is that first-class mail is used more frequently than second-class mail, and Royal Mail decided that have two first-class stamps was better than having two second-class stamps in the booklet, even if it resulted in a 2p discount to the buyer.

Also pictured are a 21p Machin proofed in a sand color, one of the then-new Matthews colors. That stamp was never issued, but the color was used for the 28p later that year. There's also a 16p Machin in a shade of violet that was never issued and a 10p light tan Machin printed from cylinder 22 that was never distributed (only stamps from cylinder 21 were sold).

And, as a bonus, there's even an article titled Carrying Mail within the United Kingdom, and it pictures Machins used on a post bus ticket.

The previous issue of Cross Post, Spring 2007, included an article by Douglas N. Muir, Curator, Philately, discussing his research on the genesis of the Machin head. This article complements his book. There's also an article on British Stamp Vending Machines by Glenn H. Morgan and Graham Eyre, and it includes the machines that have vended Machins for the last 40 years.

So I urge you to consider becoming a Friend of the BPMA. You'll get this excellent journal. You'll be able to take advantage of other benefits, including special events for members and a discount on BPMA shop products (including Muir's book). And you'll be helping the BPMA, and perhaps one day soon we'll have a British National Postal Museum again.

Membership is £15 annually for UK residents and £20 annually for us folks overseas.

I joined the Association of Friends of the NPM in its founding year, and I've been a proud member ever since. Won't you join me?

--Larry

Machin for the Queen's Diamond Wedding Anniversary

Ten years ago, Royal Mail issued four commemorative (special) stamps in honor of Queen Elizabeth's golden (50th) wedding anniversary. Royal Mail also introduced metallic gold Machins as I noted in a previous post. The gold stamps were withdrawn at the end of the year, but they reappeared in 2002 to mark the 50th anniversary of her accession, and they have remained on sale since.

This year, Royal Mail is celebrating the Queen's diamond (60th) wedding anniversary with a total of 10 commemorative (special) stamps, six in sheet format and four in a single miniature sheet. However, Royal Mail haven't issued a diamond-colored Machin. Or have they?

Now, I hear you asking how there could be a diamond-colored Machin because diamonds are colorless, or at least white.

You may recall that there was, in fact, a white Machin, the embossed Machin in the 1999 Profile on Print booklet. The booklet pane containing four of these Machins is shown above. The stamp is completely white except the service indicator, which is printed in grey.

However, the British Post Office learned a long time ago (in the 1850s) that embossed stamps are not practical, and they are probably too expensive to produce for general use. So reintroducing an embossed Machin is out of the question.

Another possibilty would be to include a bit of diamond on each Machin. After all, Austria put some small crystals on postage stamps a few years ago. (Click in the upper right corner for English.) A tiny bit of diamond should work just as well.

However, now that I think about it, the hardness of the diamond might cause problems for the mail processing equipment. That idea is not too great, either.

There is one other consideration. Not all diamonds are white. About 1 in 10,000 gem quality diamonds have impurities or structural defects that give the gem a beautiful color. There are pink, bue, red, green, brown and yellow diamonds. In fact, there's a beautiful display of them in the Natural History Museum in London. There's another display in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

The star of the show at the Smithsonian is the Hope Diamond. It is a lovely bluish color.

In fact, there are two reasons why the Hope Diamond is an appropriate one to consider for the Queen's 60th anniversary. First, it is believed that King George IV owned the diamond for many years prior to his death in 1830, so it probably belonged to the Royal Family in the past.

Second, according to the Smithsonian article, when the diamond was examined in 1988, it was decided that the color was "fancy dark grayish-blue". Eight years later, the color was changed to "fancy deep grayish-blue". What could be more philatelic than that?

And guess what! There just happens to be a grey-blue Machin, and it's the £5 highest value!

So there is, after all, a Machin that celebrates the Queen's 60th anniversary. It's a shame that Royal Mail isn't taking the opportunity to promote this association. They could put a small diamond in the upper left corner to mark the occasion, creating a new variety that Machin collectors would have to have.

Just think of how many £5 Machins could have been sold to accompany the celebration. Someone missed a big opportunity.

--Larry

Unusual Machin Items Available

I don't usually promote individual stamp dealers, but I'm making an exception in this case for two reasons. First, the items offered are unusual and worth knowing about. Second, and more importantly, the dealer has made his price list available at no cost on his web site, so that everyone can have information about the items.

The dealer is Mike Holt, and he is currently offering three very interesting groups of items:

1. De La Rue and Harrison Trial printings, used to test papers and phosphor bands.

2. Giant Machin Heads, printed in color at A4 size, used for checking the head prior to an actual print run.

3. Uncut booklet cover proofs in columns of four or five.

Visit Mike's site at www.mike-holt.com and look for price list 35. You can download parts of the list as PDF files.

--Larry

Are you confused?

I'm sure those of you who are reading this are not confused, at least about Machins. However, it seems that many of Royal Mail's customers are easily confused. During the last few years, Royal Mail has had to reverse some decisions or make changes that were justified by reducing confusion on the part of customers.


First - the 'E' non-denominated stamps

After the success of non-denominated (NVI) stamps for inland mail, Royal Mail extended the practice to stamps for letters to Europe, probably by far the most frequent destination for overseas letters. For the service indicator, Royal Mail chose a capital letter 'E'.

The 'E' Machin, shown above, was introduced in 1998, and other 'E' stamps followed, including commemoratives and country definitives.

Six years later, Royal Mail withdrew the 'E' stamps and replaced them with denominated versions. According to Royal Mail, customers thought the 'E' stood for the euro currency, and no doubt they therefore couldn't figure out how to pay for those stamps since euros are not used in the U.K.

The euro was introduced in January, 2002, so apparently Royal Mail put up with a couple of years of confusion until they gave up (or gave in) and switched the stamps back to denominated versions.

Of course, the universal (or international one-stop) stamp that says "Europe" on it remains available (apparently it is not confusing), but this is used for letters up to 40 grams and is an overpayment if used on a letter weighing under 20 grams. So we have the odd situation that the second weight step is payable by a non-denominated stamp but the first weight step is not.


Second - the large service indicators for Pricing in Proportion

Last year Royal Mail introduced its Pricing in Proportion scheme which based the cost of mailing on size as well as weight. As most of you know better than I, there are three types of items - letters, large letters and packages. I sometimes call the smaller items "standard letters" so that there is no, well, confusion about what I am describing.

Royal Mail decided that there would be non-denominated stamps for the first weight steps for both standard letters and large letters, and for both first-class and second-class service for both these items. That would mean a total of four NVI stamps.

Royal Mail introduced large stamps for this purpose - Machins that were the same height as usual but wider, yielding a horizontal orientation. In addition, the service indicator was enlarged and moved to the upper left and the word "Large" was placed on the lower portion of the stamp. The second-class blue stamp to the left is one of the two that were issued, the other being a first-class gold version.


All well and good, so far. However, the problem was that Royal Mail also redesigned the NVI's for standard letters so that they, too, had the large service indicator at the upper left. The size of the stamp remained the same as before.

The new stamp is in the middle of the trio above. Its predecessor, the original NVI design, in use since 1989, is on the left.

Royal Mail apparently figured that the mail users would understand "large stamp with the word Large for large letters and smaller stamp for (small) standard letters."

Apparently this was not easy to understand. Earlier this year, Royal Mail said its patrons were confused. They thought that the large numeral on the small stamp meant that it could be used for a large letter.

So, on June 5 of this year, Royal Mail began replacing the big numeral/small stamp with its predecessor, going back to the original design for standard letters.

I call this "back to the future." And perhaps it taught Royal Mail a lesson, because there was no good reason to change the existing NVI's in the first place.

Third - similar colors for 50p and 1st NVI

In 1990, the 50p Machin was changed to the Matthews color sand, from its previous similar ochre color. The 50p is one of the basic denominations that stays on sale, so this stamp remained available.

In 1997, Royal Mail changed the color of first-class Machins to metallic gold in honor of the Queen's Golden Wedding Anniversary. Both the then-current 26p and the 1st NVI were changed. At the end of the year, the gold stamps were withdrawn.

In 2002, Royal Mail again introduced the metallic gold color, this time to honor the 50th anniversary of the Queen's accession. There were no longer any denominated stamps for the first weight step of first-class service, so it was only the 1st NVI that was affected. This color has been in use since then.

Earlier this year, after five years of having both the sand color and the metallic gold color co-exist, Royal Mail changed the color of the 50p stamp to light grey. The reason given was that the color of the 50p was too much like the gold color of the NVI.

Both stamps are shown above. The scanned images do look very similar. However, the gold stamp is metallic - very shiny - and the real NVI stamp looks very different from the 50p.

At least I think so. However, apparently, the stamp-using public does not. The only question is whether it really took people several years to become confused, or whether Royal Mail simply procrastinated when faced with the need to change the color of the 50p.

So there we have it. Confusion reigns among the stamp-buying public. Caveat emptor.

--Larry