Royal Mail Swap Out Scheme

Thats most of the 13ps done

.........Do they have to have gum on them....lol

Interestingly we had a discussion on these at the Friday stamp group and taking a photo was exactly the advice given by one of our members who is more au fait with the regulations than most of us . Photo the hand over if certificate of posting is not possible.

I'm using up as many of my Machins as possible (duplicates), before the deadline for sending them back is reached. The scan is of 1 of 4 (similar) posted out this weekend.

I think they are still valid for postage, with a few exceptions but I haven't checked which ones lately. 1/2p must add up to a whole number if used.

I don’t understand what you are saying here Al. The market for run of the mill Machins is already such that I can get all the postage stamps I need for half the face value anyway .

All Decimal value mint Machins with a figure of value are still fully valid for postage, 1st and 2nd class have over the years actually increased in postage value.  In fact 1st class have just increased by 10p this week with a rate rise today.

of course once they have been used their cash value is minimal, if that’s  what you are saying

but from 31 January 2023 all these Machin stamps lose their postal validity anyway so cash value is only as much as collectors will pay, and should be less than face value , certainly less than the catalogue price. Scarce specialist items will probably still be sought after and may command a premium but most will languish.

Not so surely?

The swap out may not have a closure date and could run through 2023 and beyond , but the postal validity ends on 31 January 2023 .

In recent discussion here, I have been given to understand that a stamp is legal tender so it has cash value even if Royal Mail won’t accept it for postage ( hence the swap scheme), and it may require an act of Parliament to invalidate it . Not sure how accurate that information actually is however.

I like how GB spaces the stamps out and removes the material around the stamps. IT makes it easier to collect Mint as a single.

Greetings, all concerned with the Machin Swap-Out Scheme:

As drblade decided to start a separate thread on this subject after we already had 15-20 posts in the Machins! thread, I decided that having a dedicated thread on the scheme is quite a reasonable idea, so I have moved all of the posts that were specifically on this subject to the new thread.

If any of you whose post was moved would prefer to have it put back in the other thread, please just send me a PM, and I will move it back.  Or if there are any that should have been moved but were not, please let me know.

Thanks for your understanding.

No worries, drblade , and no need to apologize! This is the sort of thing that we have Moderators for. 

When the more general Machins thread starting getting a fair number of posts specifically about the Swap-Out Scheme, I wondered if it might make sense to break out that discussion into a separate thread, but I hesitated a bit because I wanted to see how it would proceed.

By the time of your latest post in a new thread, that was the impetus needed for me to decide that today is the day.

The Forum is always a work in progress. That is its nature.  As things develop, we have the ability to look at how they have changed over time and decide if we are better served to move things around a bit to re-organize them, or if we think that how they developed is good the way it is.  Please believe me, if I thought that it would be better for your post to be back in the general Machins thread, I would have asked you about moving it there instead.  No, I saw what you did, and I thought, that's a good idea; let's go in that direction.

It is never an inconvenience for me.  It's what I am here for, in my role as a Moderator.  Thanks for your support of TSF!

Did you know, that because of the proposed changeover a petition was raised against the move.

However parliament turned it down for several reasons, this is a copy of the rejection. >

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/608539#:~:text=From%2031%20Jan%202023%20stamps,added%20to%20stamps%20is%20unclear.

Paperchase.

I've been sending my duplicate Machins back to Royal Mail recently for the swap out scheme. The following scans are some of the bar-coded stamps they send back in return. I've already purchased 1 stamp from each set, for my main collection, so one each of these will go into my specialized collection. It could be a handy way of collecting for people who collect cylinder No's, colour dabs, bar codes etc with individual stamps.

Received this leaflet with yesterday's post. On the reverse, simply complete your name and address and return with eligible stamps to a Freepost address.