Saturday, January 11, 2014

350 Years of Royal Mail Public Postal Service


Datapost Motorcyclist, City of London, 17p
Rural Postbus, 22p
Parcel Delivery in Winter, 31p
Town Letter Delivery , 34p
Here I have a set of four maximum cards with stamps commemorating 350 years of Royal Mail Service. The stamps were issued on July 30, 1985. Each card has a different cancellation dated July 30, 1985, the first day of issue.

I recently bought these, and I thought the envelope they were mailed in was worth showing too. It has an assortment of definitive stamps, a Post & Go stamp: River Life from Freshwater Life 3 issued in 2013, and a stamp that appears to show a police telephone box. The police box stamp is actually from the set Classic TV - 50 Years of Doctor Who, also issued in 2013. this was described as follows:
The TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space) is the Doctor’s ship, capable of travelling anywhere in space and time. A product of Time Lord technology, the interior of the ship is much larger than its exterior. The Doctor’s TARDIS is an unreliable, obsolete TT Type 40, Mark 3 TARDIS with a faulty chameleon circuit, stuck in the shape of a mid-twentieth century police telephone box.


The definitive stamps have slits that I hadn't seen before. These can be seen on the enlargement below. The slits are a tamper-proof feature designed to prevent people from peeling off old stamps and re-using them.




This is a post for Sunday Stamps at Viridian's Postcard Blog


9 comments:

  1. An interesting set to commemorated 350 years but all the stamps deal with times since the introduction of the postage stamp as we know it. Now I have a regular fight with our local post office who often insist on using labels instead of real stamps.

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  2. Wow! Love the maxicards and the cancellations. I realize these are 2 years older than me! Lovely to have for collection!

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  3. They were a nice set of stamps, I especially like the last 'postmaster' cancel. The post and go machines are only seem to be in main post offices in major cities so as I don't live near any I'm rather envious of someone using one. Like Bob says local post offices are 'encouraged' to use labels.

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  4. Of the maxicards I had only seen the first stamp, that's a really nice set. Yes the PO are getting tighter on re-using stamps, I had no idea that is what those slits are for.

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  5. I have seen those slits on the Machins just recently. I did not know what they were for.
    Thank you for participating!

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  6. so nice! picturesque and colourful, like they've come out from some children's story book :)

    and just now ive learned what slits are....thanks :)

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  7. I have recently peeled off stamps (because I had used the wrong ones, I hasten to add) with "tamper proof" slits with great success. Just do it sideways. But in the same week, when peeling one off the backing sheet, I managed to get the little inset stuck to my finger and not where it should have been.

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