Friday 9 December 2016

877. Democracy, Castles, Rail Mail And .... Stamperija.

  Pakistan Post has issued a single stamp to commemorate "National Voter's Day" (shouldn't that be National Voters' Day?). The stamp was released on 7 December 2016. The design, alas, is remarkably uninteresting. Rating:- *.


  Royal Mail will issue a set of 6 stamps on 15 February 2016 on the subject of Windsor Castle. This issue will be released on the opening day of Spring Stampex 2017 and will also be Royal Mail's contribution to the Europa omnibus for 2017 which is on the subject of "castles". One of the 1st Class rate stamps (there are 3 x 1st and 3 x £1.52p) will feature a small "EUROPA" inscription almost imperceptibly in one of its corners. 
  The issue is similar to the "Buckingham Palace" set which was released in 2014 and it is rather irritating to find yet another Royal Mail stamp issue which fixes its attention on London and ignores 
the rest of the country. There are many spectacular castles scattered throughout The United Kingdom.
 However, I do get the point that this particular issue ties in with 2017 being the Centenary of the year in which King George V changed the Royal family's name from the Germanic "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha" to a rather more English-sounding "Windsor" so perhaps, just this once, Royal Mail's love of showcasing London on its stamps and broadly ignoring the rest of the country may be acceptable.
  But - a message to Europa collectors - Windsor is just one amid hundreds of castles in Britain. 
  Rating:- *****.







  Also to coincide with Spring Stampex there will be a new issue of Post and Go stamps the designs of which have been revealed by a press release from the Postal Museum which will dispense the new stamps from its IAR kiosk A001 with the museum's logo added to them. The theme of the 6 new 
stamps is "Mail by rail" and the set is made up of 6 interesting and colourful designs. The Postal Museum stamps will be issued on 15 February 2017 and one presumes that the same stamps, without the Postal Museum logo, will be available on the same date from IAR kiosks in the exhibition and in Enquiry offices, from NCR kiosks in ordinary post offices and in a pack of 6 x 1st Class sold by the Philatelic Bureau. The Postal Museum stamps will also only be sold as 1st Class rate values. I do like the stamps. Rating:- *****.
  The Postal Museum stamps will also be sold in packs presumably dispensed by Back Office kiosk 
B003 to judge by the illustrations but the Intelligent AR website does not yet include B003 in its list 
of kiosks (B001 is located at Tallents House in Edinburgh and B002 at the Bristol Development site). 
I see that there is a kiosk CSP1 located from 28/11/16 to 31/03/17 at International Security Printers 
in Walsall which is stated to be "Not in use" but I wonder what it's doing there.
  We might also expect that these railway-themed stamps will also be dispensed, with appropriate additional inscriptions, from kiosk A010 located at the Steam GWR museum in Swindon. What's the betting?




  Stamperija has released further paraphilatelic items with the name of a Commonwealth country printed on them, this time Mozambique. Fifteen "sheetlets", each containing 4 different "stamps", and 15 "miniature sheets" feature subjects which mostly have little or no relevance to Mozambique. For those who can be bothered these subjects are:- Formula 1 motor racing, Mahatma Gandhi, Kingfishers, Diana Princess of Wales, Motorcycles, 30th anniversary of the Musee D'Orsay, Chinese high speed trains, 90th anniversary of the death of Claude Monet, Hummingbirds, Dolphins, Centenary of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, American impressionists, 75th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow, Bees and Big cats. The stated date of issue is 10 July 2016. Rating:- 0.































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