This is my first attempt at generating a blog entry so I don't expect it to be too brilliant.
This week, I have managed to make two very brief visits to Spring Stampex at the Design Centre in Islington, London N1. Royal Mail had a stand at this show. What was of interest to me was the two new Hytec Faststamps that were advertised as being issued during the show - a silver jubilee issue and sheep. The former came out on the 22nd February and the latter on the 24th.
On the 22nd, I arrived about 20 minutes before the show was due to open. A small crowd had gathered waiting for the doors to open at 11.30. When they did, everyone headed in. My main aim was to get to the Hytec kiosk as quickly as possible. Unfortunately not quickly enough.
Everyone has heard the old jokes about the Germans putting towels on sun loungers at the side of the pool but when it comes to their dealers, they have a tendency to hog the kiosks until they have filled out their A4 shopping list of requirements using at least four different credit/debit cards. Well, this dealer hogged the kiosk vending Bird 4 faststamps and would not budge until he had all of his stock before moving on to the other public Hytec kiosk to obtain the same again but of the Silver Jubilee issue. In total he was on each kiosk for about 20-30 minutes with the queue getting even larger. What annoyed those waiting was that he indicated that he had more pre-ordered from the two kiosks in the back room.
The Hytec kiosks were the same ones as used at the Autumn Stampex 2011 but with one difference - a plastic cover was put over the slot to stop some people generating "varieties" by pulling the stamps during printing. Kiosk 22 is shown above with a close up of the cover below.
Kiosks 21 and 22 were for public use and kiosks 23 and 24 were "in the back" to meet dealer orders and over the counter sales.
Birds 4 stamps were available on kiosks 22 and 24 on the first two days of the show.
Of interest was the 7th and 10th stamp from session 24. Only those two stamps from the batch bought had the lower half of the data string missing.
The receipts format was similar to that produced at the Autumn Stampex 2011 and was in two parts - one part listing the purchase and the second being a receipt for the card payment. I have illustrated the former part and do not intend to illustrate the latter.
The 24th February saw the rolls changed in kiosks 22 and 24 to the Sheep faststamps that were due for issue that day. Royal Mail also made available the presentation pack for this issue. The kiosk ident used in these packs is 02.
On this visit, I arrived at the Design Centre around 12.30 and it was a case of deja vu. The same dealer was on kiosk 22 filling yet another A4 list of requirements. Again, a queue was building but this time, the patience of some was getting strained. Comments were made to RM staff suggesting some sort of time limit should be put on machine usage to make it fair to both dealers and the public.
I hope to have scans of the material obtained at this show shortly and will include it in a future post.
I also visited the William IV Street/Trafalgar Square office (id 015010) on both dates to investigate the suggestion that there was to be an upgrade in the facilities at this office during February 2012. The date of the upgrade is now mid March and that there will be two additional kiosks bringing the total to six.
On the 22nd, Birds 4 were available on each machine and on the 24th, the Sheep issue was available from all four machines.
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