30th December: Stamp swop!

The Royal Mail are phasing out the old “normal” stamps for new ones which have a sort of QR pattern down the side.  I always thought the “snail trail” on the stamps had some form of info encoded in it, but they must want more.  I inherited a lot of old stamps from my mum who, in her later years, must have kept buying stamps having forgotten she already had lots in a drawer.

You have to send them in for exchange rather than take them to a post office.  At todays prices (2022: 95p first class, 68p second class) they came to quite a lot of money so I thought I’d better photograph them as some sort of proof of what I was submitting for exchange. I waited until after the xmas busy period and then sent them in.  They sent back exactly the same denominations so now I even have some modern 1p stamps (apparently called “saphire blue”)… why on earth do they still make those?!  At one time I think they represented the difference between first and second class mail; those were the days. Nowadays I can’t believe that first and second class are treated differently. The cost to do that must out weigh any advantage to the mail system.