Today the Christmas 2012 Re-issue of the Post and Go Robins have started to appear in Post Office Branches.

They have, for the first time for Post and Go stamps, a in-built ‘Security code’ to identify them from the 2010 variant and the future 2013 printing.

  Two Post Office new branches will open in the Athletes Village Plaza and Main Press Centre in Stratford’s Olympic Park.

As well as offering a range of Post Office services, they will offer customers the chance to view the heritage of the London Olympic Games. There will be displays of stamps issued for the 1948 Games, plus the 30 stamps created to celebrate the 30^th Olympic Paralympic Games.

The services available include first and second class mail for letters and packets, international mail for letters and small packets, Post Office card accounts, international money transfer via MoneyGram

There will be a chance to buy Royal Mail Smiler postage stamps, personalised with a photo in a special, limited edition souvenir pack commemorating the Games, plus a small collection of mail products and other souvenirs.

Royal Mail will also issue a stamp after each Team GB gold medal, depicting each winner. These will also be for sale across 5,000 different Post Office branches.

The new branches will be open seven days a week from 8am to 9pm through the Games, expecting to serve more than 30,000 people.

My Question is- Will they have any Self Service/Post and Go machines available? Will non-ticket holders/athletes  be able to purchase these items?

Ive seen the future and the future is self service   – Wincor-Nixdorf style times ten!

A new style ‘futuristic’ Post Office branch, which has been recently refitted with ten Wincor-Nixdorf Post and Go machines has opened for business in Birmingham town centre.

The Pinfold Street, Birmingham Post Office Branch is the first of a brand new type of Branch (Known as a ‘Premier’) which promotes a whole new concept of self-service to customers.

Photo Gordon Griffiths

The ten Post & Go machines are spead around the brnach in clusters of 2 or 3 – and the branch staff mingle with the customers to assist customers with posting items and any other transactions.

The ten post and go machines have all been upgraded to V2 and offer Special Delivery , Recorded Delivery and International services- except one (Kiosk No. 10) which minus the postal weigh scales is reserved for the sale of stamps and payment for retail items.

No.10 Kiosk results in a Kiosk ID of Zero on the stamps and labels.

As well as being the first Premier Branch, The first branch to have ten post and go machines it is also the first branch to use a new, foldable, ‘mini’ date stamp, currently reserved for ‘customer side’ use on Post and Go receipts.

In what appears to be  software changes to the Post Office counter printer software, which became visible around 30th December 2010, the “date seperator” overprinted on the Horizon Postage label has changed from ‘-’  back to its ‘Horizon’ setting of   ‘/’. Thus giving a new date format of dd/mm/yy.

As well as the chnages to the format of the printed date , this change appears also to have had the effect in some Welsh branches  with the bilingual version of the overprint of causing the ‘l’ of Post Brenhinol (The Welsh equivalent of ‘Royal Mail’)  to be omitted from all labels printed in those offices that print the Bilingual version of the Horizon Postage Label in Wales. This has resulted in labels issued with the text  “Post Brenhino ”

It will be interesting to see how long this configuration lasts. Watch this space..

Machin Head Post and Go stamps have been dispensed from Wincor-Nixdorf kiosks in the UK since 2008.
There are two versions of the print – one printed by the kiosk at Post Offices across the UK and another press-printed version of the original font set available from the Philatelic Bureau at Tallents House in a presentation card.
The labels can be obtained with 5 different service indicators: 1st class & 1st class Large up to 100gr, Europe up to 20gr, Worldwide up to 10gr and 20gr, singly or in strips of up to 5 of the same value or various values.
For those that are printed by machine there are two further versions of the oveprint- original and updated font (see below) , for these we supply a strip of the five different values currently available in a special ‘collectors strip’ and offer a choice of machine code (when available) and font.

LEFT- ORIGINAL FONT

During 2009, In preparation for the pending issue of Pictorial (Birds) Faststamps some 32 Post Office branches had their kiosks’ software upgraded which resulted in the repositioning and resizing of the font.
RIGHT- UPDATED FONT
Postage is FREE to all worldwide destinations~ We ship anywhere! click here to purchase ;
Click here to purchase
Select the strip required and click ‘add to cart’:-

. . Thanks to a correspondent to this blog, who has reported that the Post and Go kiosk installed at the Premier store at Hastings, Old Town in 2008 was this week removed for  installation in ‘pastures new’ In latter times it appeared to be rather ‘unloved’ hidden behind some crisp boxes and rather under utilised~ This is a great shame as the mantra here obviously is ‘use it or lose it’ and it appears that the good citizens of Hastings, Old Town have lost their machine. It just remains to be seen where this particular kiosk ‘resurfaces’- watch this space.

Many faststamp/ATM collectors took the opportunity to visit the various ‘upgraded’ Post and Go Locations  across central London today,  with impressive results. Firstly the Post and Go self-serve facility at Ludgate/Tudor Street provided an unannounced source of pictorial Faststamps having been provided by the Post Office for dealers to obtain large quantities of labels, without impacting other ‘usual’ customers (Ludgate has four Post and Go kiosks and so has capacity for such a facility).

However, much more spectacularly the ‘No 1 ‘ kiosk at the City Of London branch office provided an opportunity to obtain examples of labels where the software upgrade had not been applied successfully and even corrupted the overprint producing a stunning ‘missing  weight’ variant.

One of the most common requests I get is for a “simplified listing” of the Horizon Postage Labels currently available (as well as the ones that have been withdrawn), in order that collectors can determine how ‘complete’ their collections are . Shown here is the full list of the 29  Postage Label Indicators, showing the 22 currently being used (and so available on the two different variants of Gold Labels) as well as the 7 types that have already been withdrawn.

For each label shown there is/was a Welsh ‘Bilingual’ version available and two label overprint types- Thin and Thick lettering as well as two Machin gold label types (Original and the “August 10″ type).

This makes 44 label overprints (22 English 22 Welsh)  in 2 print styles (Thick and Thin)  on 2 different gold Machin label types as well as the existing white labels whose stocks are currently being rundown ~ who said that ‘The modern collecting alternative’ of UK Postage Label collecting was boring, easy or without variation?..

Don’t forget, however, that many of these labels already have a limited lifespan of future availability- The original white labels are no longer available for Post Offices to order , the ‘Thick’ style (From the original Horizon software) overprint only has a matter of weeks left before it is completely removed – the first variant of the Machin gold label will be not replaced and rumors of plans (apparently)  to remove some of the ‘rarer’ indicators before Xmas ’10 have been circulated…So..fill those gaps now!

It has now been confirmed that the First Day of use of the Gold Horizon Labels in Wales was yesterday, April 20th 2010.

 Some branches having received their stock yesterday and all others in Wales receiving it  today.

Shown below is a FDC produced yesterday ‘machined’ (sic) into an inch of its life by the Cardiff FCT.

Please contact me if you would like to purchase a similar cover.

The full list of Wincor-Nixdorf Proposal Kiosks currently in use in the UK, along with branch addresses and their go-live date is now shown here:-

http://postagelabelsuk.com/?page_id=497