Today, 15th March and tomorrow  Saturday 16th March, the Salisbury Stamp show will be taking place at the Five Rivers Leisure Centre, Hulse Rd, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP1 3NR.

As part of  Royal Mail’s Post and Go Tour 2013 two Post and Go machines  vending Post and Go ‘Machin’ and ‘Union Flag’ stamps along with   ‘Post and Go Instant Smilers’ .

The Post and Go stamp offer- the same from machines A3 and A4  – is Machin and Union Flag and aligning with Royal Mails recently published policy, no special overprint is being provided for these smaller provincial stamp fairs.

As with this years Spring Stampex the smiler sheet available includes a ‘venue specific’ image in ‘position 1’  and a choice of either an image taken on an ipad in the venue (A gold postbox is supplied for this purpose)  or some pre-prepared generic images.

We have now received the First Day Covers back from the handstamping centre from last weeks Stampex trial of Hytechs Postalvision equipment, which produces slightly different versions of the Machin Post and Go Stamp (detailed below) . These are available for purchase  in our ATM shop as well as via  Ebay.

The Trial of Hytech “Postalvision” Post and Go kiosks is currently in full swing at the Spring Stampex in London. On the first and second days the two machines did brisk business with collectors keen to obtain examples of the unique Machin strips that were available.

The Hytech machines use the familar Machin head Post and Go stamps, vending the ‘collectors strip’ of 5 values similar to the Wincor-Nixdorf  kiosks but the machine IDs are two digit (instead of  single digit  ) –

machines 21 and 22 are in use.

Examples are available for sale via our Ebay shop or using our ATM shop.

Royal Mail have indicated that as part of the ongoing development of Post & Go they are planning to trial a new machine at Stampex next week in place of the standard Wincor Post and Go machine.

The information provided states “The trial machine will  not provide the usual  self-service functionality and so will be operated by staff at the counter positions. It will only vend a full set of overprints on the Machin design stamps. The overprints have the same typeface as the Wincor offering and so will only appeal to specialist collectors. ”

RM have said that they may be able to offer the pictorial Birds 2 version as well depending on availability of a second machine and space constraints.

Information continues stating “We are trialling the machine with a view to installation in Tallents House to provide a more effective offering to the trade when larger quantities are required for new issues. Depending on the suitability of the machines they may also be installed in post offices at some point in the future but there is no planned installation programme to date.”

So a very interesting Stampex in store for postage label collectors- Watch this space for the latest new on these developments..