miniature sheets

Two issues I'm really looking forward to this year are the miniature sheets being issued for the London 2010 Festival of Stamps. Perhaps the appeal is that they draw mainly on stamp design from King George V's time.

But these issues both heighten some real concerns I have about the PO in the UK. Most of these stamps will simply not be seen by the general public. They'll be available from the Bureau of course, but how many will see actual postal use? I'll use plenty of course, but the average person in the street won't even know they exist. My village PO doesn't even publicise new stamp issues any more, and that's with my influence. The fact they are in mini sheet form makes it even worse.

I'll use the sheets and the stamps from the sheets. The £1 values are particularly attractive.

So my first point is that to really push stamps they need to be widely available, widely publicised and easy to buy, from all POs. My second point is that Stanley Gibbons is complicit in this whole process of pushing certain stamp issues as purely 'collectables'. These stamps will not get a full listing in their catalogues, only the sheets will be listed. So no catalogue number for the individual stamps. This is crazy.

When listing stamps I often get single stamps from miniature sheets that have been used for a proper postal service. This doesn't only apply to British stamps but stamps from many countries - France and Austria spring to mind. Again no SG numbers for these.

People come to collecting from seeing stamps every day in their regular posts. By forcing commemorative issues into the background the PO is basically reducing its future income from collectors. Stanley Gibbons are making this process worse by regarding miniature sheets at least as purely collectables, when in fact they are often very useful when broken up to stamp mail! Stamps should first and foremost exist to stamp mail. Selling mint issues as a sideline is fine, but used stamps should always be the backbone of stamp collecting as it's a cheap and easy way of getting into the hobby.

9kg!

In the back of the car after collecting from the charity - Tuesday.


9kg lot being weighed up - Wednesday.


Weighed up boxes take over the living room! - Wednesday.


Boxed up and ready for stamping - Wednesday.

Nice stamps ready for the outside - Thursday.

Stamped up and waiting in the hallway - Thursday.

In the back of the car - Friday.

The walk to the Post Office - the reason boxes are 9kg and no heavier! - Friday.

Filling up the post office - why it's done in two runs over two days! - Friday.

The postmarker and sellotape - the final touch ensuring the stamps used for postage are nicely postmarked and protected on their journey to you - Friday.

A lot goes into your 9kg box! There's a 200 mile round trip to pick up from the charity. Normally I pick up 300kg of GB and 50kg of World.

The next day I start weighing up the 9kg boxes. The raw material comes in 10kg sacks and I normally make up the 9kg lots from at least two 10kg sacks and also include the smaller donations from about 25 other charities that come in on a daily basis.

It normally takes two days to make up all the boxes and label and stamp them up.

As they go to the village PO (to get the good cancellations!) it normally takes two trips - on Friday and Saturday - to clear the lot. This is due to space limitations in the car but, more importantly, at the PO.

With luck the boxes should arrive with the customer from Saturday onwards.

Austria on line

I've almost completed putting all my used Austria on the website. It's mainly recent material with an excellent range of used commemoratives. many of these have shown considerable price increases over the last few years. The site is now pretty complete from 1970 to date, for used at least. I do have a couple of excellent mint Austria collections that should go on at some time over the next few months. Austria here.