A change to the Horizon postage labels has taken place today, which has resulted in some additional codes being added to the overprint, to be used for Post Office internal accounting purposes for example it will be possible to identify which product a ‘SD’ label refers to – SD by 9, SD next day, SD to Channels Islands etc, as each different type will have a specific code added.

The two additional characters have been added at the end of the ‘Postage PaidUK’ and ‘Royal Mail’ or ‘Parcelforce’ lines.  An image will added as soon as possible.

The upgrade to the smaller font to all Post and Go machines is complete, but some upgrades have been more successful than others, with some stubbornly refusing to change font. Shown is a example of Cambridge kiosk No.1 with ‘corrupted’ printing, which has been seen at Bristol and other locations.

In a widely expected change and to simplify  the transaction,  on Monday 18th April the Gold Machin Label identifiers ‘MOR’ and ‘RPR’ were discontinued. A new identifier ‘RSF’ was introduced for circumstances where a ‘Home Shopping Return’ requires a ‘Recorded Signed For’ add-on. This means that a max value of 77p is possible.

For a full and updated list of current and past Horizon label identifiers see :-

https://postagelabelsuk.com/?page_id=711

On April 1st 2011, The roll out of the ‘Type 2’ font commenced with the upgrade of Kiosks Nos. 1-3 at the Ludgate Circus ‘Tudor Street’ self-service facility. Shown is a last and first day cover showing the adjacent session numbers of the stamps vended either side of the upgrade. The upgrade have continued throughout this week, with those sites in London not already upgraded to the Type 2 receiving the new font.

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..

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..

Here is the First Day Covers supplied to our registered customers for the recent Post and Go ‘Birds of Britain 2’ issue. It contains a full set of Post and Go stamps issued at the Ludgate Circus, London EC4 ( kiosk No.4) and cancelled with the ‘London EC’ postmark..  These were only available on the first day of issue from this location. The first day covers are now sold out; Mint sets are available here and here.

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