Collecting on a Shoestring 7: Visit to a Post Office

Q:  What is the most obvious way of starting a collection?

A:  Visit the local post office.

It sounds obvious but what exactly does one say at the counter? Probably, it would be best to time your visit to a quiet period. That way the counter staff should have more time to help you and you certainly won't upset the people in the queue behind you.

The most common stamps that you will find available are the definitive stamps. In Britain, these tend to be the Machins but each of the four countries has its own "pictorial" definitives. Obtaining example of each mint (unused) will give you a start. For some collectors, the important part of the sheet is the bottom left hand side which has the "cylinder" details and is usually collected as a block of six. But that is the road to another speciality. There are also booklets of stamps.

It may also be possible to obtain examples of recent comemmorative/special issues. These are usually available from the philatelic bureau (in UK) for up to 12 months but there may be some available in the counter book. Some of the main post offices still have someone who deals with philatelic inquiries and should be able to help. William IV Street/Trafalgar Square, in London, has one such position.

Note that these stamps should NOT be mounted in your album using stamp hinges. Either us Hawid strips or use a stockbook to store mint stamps. Some albums are available that allows one to collect used  which a mounted directly on to the page and mint stamps slotted in to "pockets" on a clear leaf over the page.

Royal Mail have about 150 offices equipped with Wincor-Nixdorf ATMs marketed as Post and Go to the customer which allows the purchase of stamps for a number of services as well as allowing the payment of other goods. These kiosks can have a definitive Machin version or a pictorial issue. That depends on which roll is withdrawn from stock to refill the kiosk. There are labels that look like the computer generated Smartstamps. There are some, including myself, who collect these.

When abroad, it is always worth a visit to a post office. You can compare their services with the your at home service. But most of all you can add to your collection at face value rather at dealers' prices.

Good hunting.

Clapham Common and Old Street

Over the Summer of 2012, three additional kiosks have appeared at these offices - one at Clapham Common  (005008) and two at Old Street (028003). I visited these offices on the 26th and 28th September respectively to obtain examples of all three kiosks. These are illustrated here.

Clapham Common 

This office is at 161-163 Clapham High Street SW4 7ST. The closest underground station is Clapham Common.

Old Street

Practically on the door of Old Street underground station, this office is at 205 Old Street EC1V 9QN. The station is out of shot to the right in this view and is accessed by a slope. This office was refurbished in July 2012 opening up the part of the office to the left of the entrance. The order of the kiosk are 2, 1, 3 and 4 from the front of the office.

Items from kiosks 3 and 4 are illustrated below.

Wincor-Nixdorf and Hytech Cattle

I was fortunate to re-visit the Autumn Stampex event on the 28th September for the release of the Cattle faststamps. I wanted examples from both the Wincor-Nixdorf and the Hytech on the first day.

I stopped off at William IV Street/Trafalgar Square to obtain examples of the "normal" Wincor stamps. Kiosks 1 and 2 were vending sheep and kiosks 3 and 4 were producing the cattle stamps. I purchased single examples of the faststamps from kiosks 1 to 3 and two sets of six first class stamps from kiosk 4 to fill FDC requirements.

The Wincors produced were as expected - font 1 and with the normal ident (015010). The datastring is as normal - 015010 4-06244-01. The receipt had one minor variation - the address was all on one line and in lower case lettering. Of note is the session number, 06244, which is low. This would suggest a resetting around the 17th July. This is about the same time as the 000000 fault on kiosk 1 which was also reset about that time.

The Hytech produced a new form of datastring which includes letters - A9GB12 A1-000259-06. The "A" in A1 indicates a kiosk which may be used by the public, "B" is a backroom kiosk and "C" is for Philatelic Bureau produced items. The basic receipts for the Hytech are much simpler and yet more complicated than the Wincors but come in two or more parts - the basic order receipt (illustrated) a card receipt (not illustrated) and a receipt for any collector's strips.

The fonts in use in both kiosks for printing the stamps now seem to match each other.

Both sets were cancelled by the Stampex first day cancel for this set.

Twenty-eighth Philatelic Congress of Great Britain Covers

I have mentioned the first commercially available mechanical sorting machine – the Transorma. This machine was designed and produced in Holland by Marchand and Andriessen. The machine’s name was an abbreviation for TRANsport and SORting Marchand and Andriessen.

The first machines entered service in Holland between 1927 and 1930. Two machines were purchased by the Post Office and installed at Brighton in 1935. Some trials commenced around the 14^th September 1935 with the official use occurring on the 7^th October with the earliest dated covers being the 8^th.

People searching for examples of Brighton Transorma marks tend to look at postcards from Brighton/Sussex and any envelopes from September 1935 to 1967. One rich source is Philatelic Congress of Great Britain Covers from 1946. Many of these received Transorma marks. Two such covers are illustrated here dated on the first and last days of the event. 

Of note is the ident mark (arrowed). Both were processed by operator “i”. The earliest example has the ident in black while the other is in black/red. After the Second World War, spares were hard to come by including the inked tapes. So the Post Office made do with typewriter ribbon which had black and red sections. The normal colour for idents is red.

These covers are collectible for two reasons – they commemorate an event and they present evidence that a machine was used to sort the mail.

Collecting on a Shoestring 6 

I have mentioned the Cover Collectors Circuit Club in a previous entry. This so of society allows people to make contact with others throughout the world. Sometimes, members start up collaborations with those on a circuit. Some members use these contacts to share their interest and exchange material.

These contacts allow new perspectives on collecting interests and sometimes clippings of newspapers that are not normally available in the UK. These can be added to one’s collection to add detail and substance to an issue.

One US set that I quite enjoyed was spread out over a few years featuring characters from Warner Brothers’ Cartoons – Silvester and Tweety, Porky Pig, the Coyote and the Road Runner, Bugs Bunny and that despicable duck – Daffy.

From what I understand, the stamps were issued as a sheetlet of 9  attached to a larger version of the stamp image with the 10^th stamp embedded in a miniature sheet format. This is illustrated here.

Background details on the cartoon characters can be obtained via Wikipedia. One could also add such things as comics in which these characters appear. I would either add a photocopy of a cartoon or add the comic itself on a separate page.

By adding other cartoon characters, one can build up an interesting collection which could include such areas as Japanese animes to familiar characters (in the UK) as Dennis the Menace and Rupert the Bear.

Autumn Stampex "Faults" - NOT AN ADVERT

A brief search on e-bay through up another batch of Hytech "faults". These are strips with missing or poorly positioned text.They are on offer at up to just under £200. One example is illustrated below.

A similar occurrence was reported about a year ago where similar stamps were produced at Stampex. A note on their existence also appeared in Stamp Magazine. It was reported then that this sort of fault was produced by pulling on the strip as it was printed. The advice given at that time was not to touch these as they are not genuine faults but constructs by the purchaser.

To overcome this problem, the previous machine was modified by the addition of a guard. This was not included on the current design. 

Be warned! These are probably NOT genuine faults. I suggest that they should NOT be purchased.

A follow up item on the Norphil Blog has suggested that a fault did happen. One person commenting claims to have videoed this fault as it happened. The engineer was called and the fault fixed. The kiosk in question was A1.

I can confirm that at 12:37 this machine was working correctly on the Friday and the session number was 259. The above item from ebay and others on that site have session numbers around 300-310. Another correspondent on the Norphil Blog site reported that the kiosk was working at 14:45. 

I still have some doubts but, given the circumstances from Autumn 2011 Stampex, I feel that it is best to question an item than pay over hard cash and then find out that someone has "worked the system".

NOT AN ADVERT

There also seems to have been a bit of a slip up in installing stock (possibly on the Saturday) where the cattle stamps had been put in the printer that previously was used to print the flags. This occurred on kiosk B1 which was at the back of the Royal Mail stand.

Some genuine varieties have been posted on ebay. These are cattle stamps from Wincor-Nixdorf kiosks where, for some reason, font 1 has reappeared leading to the usual partially missing text varieties.

This examples, here, are from Kings Square, Gloucester with the office ident 014523. This fault has been reported at this office on previous issues. 

Strips of the missing "up to 10g" variety from the same machine are also available on e-bay.

NOT AN ADVERT