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.

This error came from the Harlow Post Office Post & Go machine, which had the Birds II stamps in it for ONLY FOUR DAYS  in February 2011!!

Harlow Post Office was a non Birds office at the time and should have only issued the standard Machin type faststamps!

However nearby Milton Keynes Post Office ran out of Post & Go Faststamps at the end of 2010 and Harlow PO let them borrow some of theirs.

When Milton Keynes eventually got new stock in it was all Birds II stamps and to repay Harlow, they sent them Birds II  instead of Machin type faststamps, which they put in their machine!!!

When Royal Mail discovered the mistake they instructed the staff at the PO to withdraw the Birds II stamps immediately and replace them with Machin type faststamps which they did on 23/02/11.

All machines have now been upgraded to the smaller font and Birds series 3 stamps.

UPDATE:- This unique set is available here

Exclusive!- It has today been confirmed by Royal Mail that the Post and Go Birds 3 Faststamps to be issued on May 19th 2011 will be available from all Post Office branches  equipped with Post and Go kiosks.

Our full list of kiosks is available here https://postagelabelsuk.com/?page_id=497

The third set depicts the birds that can be found on or close to Britain’s lakes, rivers and streams and are shown below:-

Farringdon Road, London Ec1 Post Office has just moved down towards Farringdon station. The new branch has been totally refurbished to the latest standard and includes a Post and Go Kiosk…

Upon enquiry with the staff it was confirmed that the kioks is the one orginally installed at Hastings Old Town Post Office but with a new branch code of 100003 and the counter reset- Note the font has not been upgraded to the new, condensed  style.

We are offering for sale a mint strip of 5 , complete with relevent receipt.

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.

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..

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

The second set of Faststamps depicting British garden birds was issued on 24th January 2011, one of three sets to be issued this year.  There is two versions – one printed by the kiosk at 31 selected Post Offices across the UK and another press-printed version from the Philatelic Bureau at Tallents House, available 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. Thus there are 30 different value/design combinations in total.

Note the Birds Of Britain 2 set was only available on the first day of issue fom Ludgate Circus Branch.

For the machine printed versions, we supply a strip of five different values plus an additional sixth stamp with a extra 1st class faststamp printed by the machine in a particular location.

The presentation card consists of 6 machine printed ‘1st’  Faststamps.

Postage is FREE to all worldwide destinations~ We ship anywhere!

This issue shows (In the order that they are printed on the machine-vended strip):- Collared dove,  Greenfinch , Blackbird,  Magpie, Long-tailed Tit  and Chaffinch.

The stamps are available in two different versions :-Firstly as as a sheet of six different stamps all with ‘1st Class’ press- printed directly from Royal Mail in Edinburgh and secondly, the ‘real’ machine printed  versions (available from

31 different outlets

) with five different overprints.

The Machine printed versions are cut every fifth stamp. The third set of British birds is scheduled for issue in May and the fourth in September 2011 .

The image shows the set of six, with Ludgate Circus self-service facility kiosk No.4 overprint, which was available for the first day of issue only.

To purchase these stamps from our ATM Shop click here:-  https://postagelabelsuk.com/?page_id=929

The first pictorial “faststamps” went live today at Stampex as well as 31 other Offices and proved to be very popular with collectors both old and new.