Humble Guide of the Bristish contemporary collector

While Eric is coming back from an holiday in England, I will try to write down what I have understood of the British philatelic program since I read the monthly Stamp Magazine (february 2007 and counting).

The most simple : commemorative issues usually are sold in six different stamps, sometime with a mini-sheet. In January, the Beatles were the best sellers from London to New Zealand. After that, the rock band was followed by six images taken from space for the anniversary of TV show The Sky at Night, six personalities of the history of British abolition of slavery, and six pictures reminding of usual Channel beach holidays.

Relatively simple (if, of course, you avoid details) : the Machin definitive series. But, some stamps can only be bought inside a Machin booklet... like the "Love" stamp in January 2007.



Finally, the French I am is beaten by Perfidious Albion with the Smilers and the Countries issues.

The first seems to be sequels of a very good and humoristic issue, that was so successful that Royal Mail decided to re-issue it regularly in the form of a 10-stamp sheet se-tenant with thematic labels.

Countries are more historic, but nowadays affected by the Smilers-be-back effect. Between 1958 and 1967, the Wilding design was modified to accept the symbol of one of the British Crown kingdoms, so that the four parts of the United Kingdom, Guernsey, Jersey and Man have got their own stamps, in a way. The three latter received their postal independance in the 1960's and 1970's. The Machin series lived with their Countries couter-part too.

In the recent years, new definitives stamps completed Machin-Countries stamps. They are illustrated by a national symbol (like the English Lion showed on top of this page). The illustrations sometime changed, tariffs are regularly followed by new issues. The stamp above was issued for 2002 Soccer World Cup in South Korea and Japan.

But, like Eric told us in his message, these Countries stamps are squared by mini-sheet with se-tenant labels printed with local landscapes. And since, these Smilers and Countries sheets are a little bit commercials, errors appeared : Dominique reminds of the orthograph problem of the May 2007 England mini-sheet.

Any ressemblance with French philatelic issues, plethoric, ill-advertised or with errors is purely due to chance. With this message, I want to thank the collectors whose blogs and websites help find answers to my questions and find new topics of curiosity.