wakeybluenose
Member 
Mostly harmless!
Posts: 281 
What I collect: GB to 2000 (but definitives to date) / Ireland to 2000 / General WW classics & definitives / ASFEC / SciFi & Fantasy Literature / Local History
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Post by wakeybluenose on May 10, 2023 14:35:07 GMT
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Post by paul1 on May 10, 2023 15:59:05 GMT
hmmm - As a non-Machin person, these wouldn't appeal to me, though with age has come some tolerance, and now I try to respect the opinions of others. Perhaps the bottom line as to what members here feel about these 'almost never were' stamps, could be "what is it that we might compare them to/with" - as our judgement, of most things in life, is arrived at mostly by comparison - and thus we express our opinion. I don't know that I buy the story that it was the Monarch's deference to her subjects that resolved the matter of appearance, but it sounds a touching tale. The digits have an overly large appearance - and whilst some might say that this gives them originality, others might feel it reduces the looks to a poster style rather than a stamp. Sadly, U.K. stamps lost their artistic engraved quality eons back, and they've long ago been reduced to something akin to a piece of commercial art. Our opinion probably matters little, and Joe Public I'm sure cares even less. However, I do like the colours, prominent and strong. Little known fact that not everyone knows.......... the U.K. is the only country whose name is omitted from their stamps.
Erm, you don't by any chance know where said rubbish bin is now ??
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cjoprey
Member
Scanning stamps for my website...
Posts: 1,443
What I collect: Belgium (predominantly), British Commonwealth (older ones), WW (whatever comes my way...)
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Post by cjoprey on May 10, 2023 16:30:19 GMT
Little known fact that not everyone knows.......... the U.K. is the only country whose name is omitted from their stamps. The only country whose name CONTINUES to be omitted from their stamps...  Have a look at early Belgian stamps...  |
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Post by paul1 on May 10, 2023 17:48:28 GMT
thanks Chris - I'm a great fan of being corrected - I do have a lot of early Belgian stamps - obviously I don't look at them often enough - I did once try to put them in order, but am sure I failed, and since then I have found a lot more;-)
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drblade
Member
Posts: 726
What I collect: GB Unmounted mint & Machin definitives Q.E.II Used commemoratives
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Post by drblade on Jun 10, 2023 6:16:13 GMT
1998 saw the introduction of The Disability Discrimination Act, so some time later Royal Mail reviewed it's products in line with the act. The 1st & 2nd NVI's (none value indicators) were sent to certain organisations for their approval, (booklets of 12 printed by The House of Questa). Later Royal Mail decided that the trials were not successful so printing further amounts was abandoned. Some of the stamps sent out to organisations were never returned & a few were later being sold on the philatelic circuit. They are out there somewhere, finding them is another story!! |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2023 18:51:40 GMT
An obvious practical fault of this design is that large numerals are easier to forge plausibly than large portraits.
I wonder why they proposed to reverse the Queen's portrait? This was done from time to time on commemorative stamps (starting in 1966 with the "Battle of Hastings" 1s3d value), but it would have been unprecedented on definitives.
I very much doubt if either the Queen's "humility" or somebody else's "ardent royalism" (as alleged in the article) had anything to do with the rejection of the design. It just looks bleak and boring and devoid of life, doesn't it?
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Post by paul1 on Jun 11, 2023 7:47:13 GMT
would anyone feel it worthwhile to 'forge' designs such as these, the values of which are miniscule really? I think most of our comments tend to overlook the fact that modern U.K. stamp design has no wish to make any pretence of being aesthetic/artistic, and instead are simply cost effective small pieces of coloured paper, of little visual merit, and sold simply in exchange for a courier service of the item in question. I have the greatest respect for whatever people choose to collect, but for a lot of us who remember pre-decimal issues, we're back again to 'comparisons' when we make an assessment of 'good' or 'not so good'.
What, at rock bottom, would be the reasons that designs such as 'Sea Horses', British Empire Exhibition, Jubilee and all those other beautiful definitive issues could not be offered today? Is it simply not cost effective - can't find a suitable engraver/designer - the public can't be bothered anyway ??
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angore
Member
Posts: 5,355
What I collect: WW, focus on British Empire
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Post by angore on Jun 11, 2023 10:42:00 GMT
The example above was intended for the visually impaired and do not think it would be the only design released.
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eggdog
Member
I want a new Harley!
Posts: 464
What I collect: It's complicated....
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Post by eggdog on Jun 12, 2023 15:11:19 GMT
would anyone feel it worthwhile to 'forge' designs such as these, the values of which are miniscule really? The market for counterfeit United States Forever stamps is healthy enough to have drawn scrutiny from law enforcement here. Naturally, the attention fell first on "bodegas in New York", and I'm sure it happens, but I couldn't understand why New Yorkers buying a few stamps to send birthday cards would create such a problem. Annoying, yes. Immoral, yes. But a threat to the world economy, I don't think so; more like a way of blaming a particular community so that the rest of us can feel good about ourselves. But fake postage stamps all over the place, including Facebook (because of course they're on Facebook). More recently, most of the action does appear to be online. (That site looks sleazy, but I looked through articles about a couple of things I know about and it seemed straight up to me.) And here it is straight from the horse's mouth. I really don't know if this is a problem in other countries. Printing equipment that was barely imaginable 30 or 40 years ago is fairly commonplace now, and I did read some years ago about how fake currency was a regular industry in North Korea, so I imagine that fraudulent stamps are available in a lot of different places. I wonder if FRAMAs and other labels like that are at least in part a response? Would they be easier or harder to counterfeit, or to get from unauthorized channels? Oh, and I dislike giant-number postage stamps on aesthetic principles. I don't collect Machins, but these things are worse by almost any standard I can think of. Other than that, I'm in a really good mood today.  |
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Post by paul1 on Jun 12, 2023 15:38:13 GMT
thanks - very interesting, and the comment that printing processes don't need a 40 tonne Heidleberg any more, and can be worked almost on the kitchen table top, must be an incentive that encourages the home faker. I don't collect Machin's either, but some folk are expert at them and get a lot of pleasure form collecting them - suspect also it's a case of you can get used to almost anything new, given the required passage of time. My 'human nature' is a tad old now, and when I think of the cost of a stamp my brain still imagines they're about 3d. or 4d. a shot - they aren't of course - in the U.K. first class for letter rate is now in excess of £1.
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drblade
Member
Posts: 726
What I collect: GB Unmounted mint & Machin definitives Q.E.II Used commemoratives
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Post by drblade on Jun 12, 2023 16:07:14 GMT
would anyone feel it worthwhile to 'forge' designs such as these, the values of which are miniscule really? The market for counterfeit United States Forever stamps is healthy enough to have drawn scrutiny from law enforcement here. Naturally, the attention fell first on "bodegas in New York", and I'm sure it happens, but I couldn't understand why New Yorkers buying a few stamps to send birthday cards would create such a problem. Annoying, yes. Immoral, yes. But a threat to the world economy, I don't think so; more like a way of blaming a particular community so that the rest of us can feel good about ourselves. But fake postage stamps all over the place, including Facebook (because of course they're on Facebook). More recently, most of the action does appear to be online. (That site looks sleazy, but I looked through articles about a couple of things I know about and it seemed straight up to me.) And here it is straight from the horse's mouth. I really don't know if this is a problem in other countries. Printing equipment that was barely imaginable 30 or 40 years ago is fairly commonplace now, and I did read some years ago about how fake currency was a regular industry in North Korea, so I imagine that fraudulent stamps are available in a lot of different places. I wonder if FRAMAs and other labels like that are at least in part a response? Would they be easier or harder to counterfeit, or to get from unauthorized channels? Oh, and I dislike giant-number postage stamps on aesthetic principles. I don't collect Machins, but these things are worse by almost any standard I can think of. Other than that, I'm in a really good mood today. Hi eggdog paul1 the stamps in question were primarily designed for use by partially sighted/unsighted people. I agree about the aesthetics & dire large numbers, surely the designs would be less of a consideration for unsighted people. Many booklets in UK now have notches (1 or 2) cut from the edge of them, 1 denoting first class stamps 2 denoting second class stamps within the booklets. Counterfeiting of stamps has been a major headache for Royal Mail for years with Machins in particular. It seems that each time a new set of stamps is printed more security features are incorporated within them, such as phosphor bars, year codes, date codes etc. The latest innovation being bar-coded stamps with each having a unique code. Problem with the bar codes is, if the bar-code is cancelled prior to reaching the machinery that is supposed to "read" it, then recording of every stamp being USED fails. I also understand that recently the bar-coded stamps are already being counterfeited/forged. |
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Have a look at early Belgian stamps... 
