Royal Mail celebrates the 40^th anniversary of the Machins

Having ignored the fifth, tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, twenty-fifth, thirtieth and thirty-fifth anniversary of the first Machin definitives, Royal Mail made up for it on the fortieth. On June 5, 2007, Royal Mail released a group of issues that might have made Arnold Machin blush.

⇒ A ruby £1 Machin to replace the current mauve version. Jeffery Matthews, who developed 30 Machin colors in the 1980s and three more in the 1990s, was asked to do one more for this occasion. He chose ruby, since that color symbolizes the the 40^th anniversary.

⇒ A miniature sheet containing the ruby £1 Machin, the now-obsolescent mauve £1 Machin, an almost-square first-class stamp picturing Arnold Machin and an almost-square first-class stamp picturing the first Machin stamp, the 4d sepia. The central images of the latter two stamps will be embossed. These two stamps, and the miniature sheet (shown above), were designed by Matthews and Together Design.

⇒ A prestige stamp booklet with four panes containing a variety of stamps including two of the new ruby £1 Machin and two each of the Machin and stamp-on-stamp commemoratives. The booklet includes many images of Machin at work as well as designs and essays for the stamp.

⇒ Other related items including a presentation pack containing the souvenir sheet (with text written by Francis Machin, Arnold’s son who sadly passed away later in the year and a ‘generic sheet’ containing 20 of the stamp picturing Machin and adjacent labels picturing the pre-decimal Machins issued in 1967-69, and a folded booklet containing the usual first-class non-denominated gold Machins, a promotion for the anniversary with an image of the Machin stamp and Machin’s signature on the tab (pictured below).

More information and images, including a full display of the prestige booklet, can be found in the Virtual Machin Album.

If this is what Royal Mail has done for the 40^th anniversary, what will they do for the 50^th? (Posted just a little late on July 17, 2008) top

Dr. James A. Mackay, author and postal historian

Dr. James A. Mackay, noted author and postal historian who wrote literally hundreds of books and thousands of articles, passed away on August 12, 2007.

Dr. Mackay was well-known to many philatelists, especially those who studied stamps and postal history of Great Britain and Commonwealth, and especially of Scotland. His many books and articles covered a wide range of subjects. Personally, I find his 1997 book, Under the Gum: Background to British Stamps, which covers stamps from 1840 to 1940, an essential part of my reference library. A smaller book, titled simply British Stamps, published in 1985, is also very useful.

Recently, he wrote regular articles for the British Philatelic Bulletin and Scott Stamp Monthly.

Mackay was interviewed by Gordon Milne, former president of the Great Britain Collectors Club, as part of the “In The Spotlight” series of articles. An obituary appeared in The Scotsman. (Posted August 22, 2007) top

What’s in a (color) name?

Five brand new Machins were issued in March for new postal rates. There was a significant change to the marginal markings on the panes of these stamps.

The printer’s logo, which appeared to the left of the bottom left stamp on the pane, has been removed. (You can see the logo on the 50p block here.) Douglas Myall notes in the June issue of the British Philatelic Bulletin that “they [the logos] are not considered necessary.” Cylinder numbers used for Machins begin with a letter that identifies the printer (D for De La Rue, W for Walsall, E for Enschede), so the logo is redundant. (Too bad — I liked having them as part of the cylinder block.)

At the same time, a new marking was introduced. To the left of the third row of the pane is the name of the color of the stamp. (See the block to the left.) The (possible) reason for the color name involves a bit of a story.

A couple of years ago, as De La Rue’s changeover to a new printing press, known as the ATN press, settled down, De La Rue and Royal Mail agreed on a standard paper that had no optical brightener added. This paper looks gray under ultraviolet light, darker than the papers used for most Machins during the first years of ATN printings in 2003-2004.

Royal Mail found that some of the Matthews colors were not being accurately reproduced on this paper. To fix the problem, De La Rue created new cylinders for many of the Machins. The depth of the computer etching of each cylinder was adjusted to achieve the optimum result for the color of ink that would be used with the cylinder.

As a result, cylinders cannot always be reused if a color is changed. For example, in 2005 the 35p Machin was changed from dark brown to lime green. With this new cylinder-making process, Royal Mail could only reuse the cylinder if the proper depth of etching happened to be the same for lime green as it is for dark brown. Having the color name in the margin in effect indicates the depth of the etch and indirectly indicates what other colors the cylinder is suitable for.

At least, that’s the official story. It seems fishy to me, though. How often is a stamp immediately reissued in a different color? Not very. There’s the new £1 ruby, the 50p light gray issued last March and the 35p lime green just mentioned. And all of these are special cases that are not likely to be repeated; normally, the color of a Machin isn’t changed unless there’s a long gap in which it has been off sale. After such a gap, it’s probable that a new cylinder would be created anyway. And if the cylinder were reused, the old color name would either appear in the margin of the stamps with the new color, or the name would have to be removed from the cylinder and replaced with the new name.

So it seems odd to me that De La Rue would go to all this trouble for a situation that might occur once every few years, if that.

The only other, and definitely cynical, explanation I can think of is that Royal Mail told De La Rue to add the color name in the expectation of selling more stamps. Indeed, in its latest promotional brochure, Royal Mail features strips of four stamps with the color name. (Royal Mail calls them “blocks,” although that term is not commonly used by collectors for a single row or column of stamps.) However, it could be that De La Rue decided to add the color name, and Royal Mail is simply offering to sell these marginal strips in the same way it sells cylinder number blocks.

Incidentally, this change does not apply to the recent 50p light grey because De La Rue used the same cylinder that was previously used for the sand-colored version. Obviously, Royal Mail figured out that the cylinder was reusable without having the color name in the margin, though perhaps they had to go to some trouble to do so. So it is the last stamp with the printer’s logo but no color name in the margin, unless Royal Mail reuses another old cylinder for a new color.

UPDATE: Douglas Myall was able to confirm with Royal Mail that if a new color was needed for a specific Machin, a new cylinder would be created, even if the old one had the correct depth of etch. Therefore, there seems to be no operational reason for the color name in the margin. I guess my cynical view is correct. (Posted June 30, 2007. Updated August 23, 2007.) top

The Stoneham is reborn

The Stanley Gibbons company is the primary catalog producer in Great Britain. In the 1970s, Gibbons produced two catalogs covering British stamps, the basic Collect British Stamps and the comprehensive five-volume Great Britain Specialized. In 1978, a catalog for intermediate collectors appeared. It was the Stoneham Great Britain Stamp Catalogue, and it filled the large gap between the two Gibbons catalogs.

Not one to ignore an opportunity, Gibbons introduced a similar catalog, the Great Britain Concise Stamp Catalogue in 1986. The Concise pretty much killed off the Stoneham. After a series of annual editions between 1978 and 1985, only a few editions of the Stoneham appeared after the Concise was introduced, the last being in 1998.

However, the Stoneham was reborn last year. The Machin Collectors Club got the rights, updated the catalog, converted it to full color, and produced a worthy competitor to the Concise. This was shortly followed by the Simplified Stoneham, a competitor to Collect British Stamps. You can get more information on the Stonehams (and buy the catalogs) here and here. The Concise is available from Stanley Gibbons. Both should be available from major philatelic literature dealers.

I liked the Stoneham in its prior incarnation, so I got a copy of this new version, as well as the latest Concise. I set them up against each other in a shootout to see which one was better (at least in my opinion). I think you’ll find the shootout and the results to be very interesting. (Posted May 20, 2007) top

Last update: July 17, 2008
Copyright © 2007 by Larry Rosenblum