More registered PS envelopes

I've been sent a number of images of covers which may be of interest to readers, while I sort out what of mine to show first.

RW has sent some more registered postal stationery envelopes which he picked up in the 1970's, both of which refelct an absence of the normal Registered Label.

The first is from a sub-office in Barrow-in-Furness, and has a manuscript 'Barrow 9' on a 'mute' label with the roll number of 13.  These labels are most often seen used from Field Post Offices, where the FPO datestamp is used in the blank area - which must be why the label is larger than regular ones.

 

Incidentally this is a good example of the solo use of a ½p stamp used to make-up the (20+3p) 23p envelope after the 1st class letter rate increase.

The second cover shows a civilian use copying the FPO use for a mute label, used at Bolton and Bury 30 Jan 79 - possibly the sorting office as it shows both place-names.  If it were a sub-office or even a head post office, one would expect the counter date-stamp to be used.

Both these are examples of postal history which will be of especial interest to collectors in or studying the area - 'County' societies and study groups exist.  If you saved this sort of thing and no longer want it, they are the people who might be interested.

If these were short-lived situations it is quite possible that they went unnoticed locally at the time, and providing this cover will add to the body of postal history and philatelic knowledge for that area.

UPDATE 17 February 2021.  My thanks to MikeM for sending a part cover from the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately the stamp and date part is missing, but the label is endorsed 'Shanklin 3'.   Mike thinks this dates from after 1959 based on the text on the reverse.

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Speical Delivery, Registration, the 10d drab, and use-up time!

My thanks to MC for providing three more images of covers in his collection, each of them with something special about it.

The first is a Special Delivery cover from Ilkeston in Derbyshire to North Ferriby in Yorkshire in 1968.  In those days Special Delivery meant Special - not like today where it combines Registration with a timed next-day delivery service.

According to the Great Britain Philatelic Society website:

"Under this Service Letters and Parcels are forwarded by Mail in the regular course of post to any Express Delivery Office in the Kingdom, and on arrival there are sent out for delivery by Special Messenger."

The term Express being replaced by Special in 1938.

 

The fee for Special Delivery was 3s (shillings), paid here by the pair of 1/6d stamps.   Back in the day, it was quite likely that the first delivery to this company was so early that no special effort was required by the delivery office and this accompanied the first normal delivery.

Postage is paid by the 10d drab/stone definitive, for the fourth step, 6 - 8 ounces.  Unfortunately this is only a part-front, but for very large packets that is often the case.

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Second is a registered airmail cover also using the 10d drab, this time x 3 with additional 9d green & 2d brown definitives.  This makes a total of 3s5d. 

Although this is an airmail envelope, it was not sent by airmail, as RAF Rissington is in Gloucestershire.  I suspect the serviceman sending his insurance premium to Royal Insurance had these envelopes left over from a recent overseas posting and saw no reason not to use them.

The postmark is LITTLE RISSINGTON RAF / CHELTENHAM GLOS although the text is so crammed into the space that if it was incomplete you might read it as 'RAF SO'.  The 1st class letter rate was 5d for the first 4 ounces. and 9d for 4-6 ounces, with the basic registration fee of 3s. Although there were higher registration fees, none would make the rate except the maximum of 3s9d with no postage paid!

UPDATE: oh, the shame of it. No excuse, but it took an American to point out my error (thanks Gary). I mis-read my notes of the fees, and copied that to the total postage.  The postage on this is only 3/5d, so basic letter rate plus basic registration.

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The final cover is registered airmail, this time to Canada, from London.  In fact from Trafalgar Square B.O. in London.  And by the type of envelope I would suggest it was sent by Stanley Gibbons or possibly one of the many other stamp dealers in The Strand area.  The giveaway is the mixed pre- and post-decimal day definitives including the 8d red which was replaced by the blue in January 1969 just six months after it was issued.   The date on this item is January 1972.

There are 10 x 8d red definitives, = 80d = 6/8d = 33½p.  With the 1½p stamp making a total of 35p, this covers the 20p registration fee and 15p postage for the second step 1 ounce rate.

In discussions about whether a cover is commercial or (blatantly) philatelic, this falls between the two.  It is clearly commercial if it is a dealer sending stamps to a customer.  The stamps are 'out of time' in that their usage is three years after they ceased to be sold at the post office.

But a month later they would have been truly 'out of time' and invalidated for postal purposes, so it made sense for the sender to use up what were probably large stocks of a stamp which most collectors at the time already had from when it was first issued.

So it is a mixed franking, commercial, 'just-in-time' cover, and a good example to have in a collection if only to tell the story of how, within weeks, the stamps could not have been used.


There's much more to come, but for now, that's all on the Machin front.

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Registered Postal Stationery Envelopes and labels (or not)

This is a subject that I may well make into an online display, since I already have many pages which I have shown to our local club.  

Whilst the pre-war rates were interesting, and foreign usage especially ripe for various combinations of adhesives depending on weight and insured value, one of the best periods is the 1970s, as I am of the opinion - until proved otherwise - that many of the envelopes used in that period of rapid inflation in postal rates, were never used at post offices without the addition of adhesives because the rate had increased before they could use them.

And in some cases, uprated stock was further uprated, especially in 1975 when the postage rates increased twice.   But that's for later. 

Tonight I'm showing an ordinary registered stationery envelope sent by a reader (RW).  It's a basic 23p envelope, officially uprated by ½p when the letter rate increased.  First issued in 1971 the 23p covered the 20p registration fee and 3p 1st class letter rate.  On 10 September 1973 the letter rate increased to 3½p hence the addition.  That rate lasted until June 1974.

The letter was posted from Yeovil to a holiday camp in Paignton, presumably containing a deposit in banknotes for a holiday booking - not everybody had a bank account, and cash payments were common 50 years ago.

The Goldcroft sub-postoffice used registration labels captioned Yeovil, with the branch identification the numeral 5*.  But apparently Goldcroft's supply of labels had been exhausted and not replenished (hard to believe), or lost!  So the postmaster improvised in manuscript, and recorded the letter in the ledger as usual.

     

Fifty years ago, while many people rescued the mail from their office, few kept the envelopes intact - they did it mainly to collect the stamps.

* More about this on the Somerset Postal History Blog.

We don't know how long this situation at Goldcroft lasted, nor how many registered letters were sent.  But what we do have is a rescued cover with a story behind it.  Whilst manuscript registration 'labels' are relatively common in many African countries and some islands in the West Indies, this is the first I have seen in the UK.

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Insured letter puzzle - 1989 to Germany

I promised that I would be doing so more on this blog soon, and I'm starting by showing a puzzle sent to me by a reader, MC.

Royal Mail introduced registered envelopes in 1878 and the last produced that showed a value was in 1984.  From 1986 envelopes with NVI indicia were issued, in two main sizes, G H and K, but within these first two there were 5 different variants!  And that was only the first NVI design as shown below.

Sent from Edinburgh to Germany on 13 November 1989.  This is prepaid for the minimum postage and registration fee within the UK, but between 1986 and 1998 there was also a concessionary reduced minimum rate for EEC destinations, equal to the basic first class inland letter rate. It applied to all-up mail to 1991 and airmail thereafter.  This means that no extra postage was necessary on this letter to Germany, provided it was under 60 g in weight.

But what about the insurance?  According to the GBPS website postage rate pages (open free to non-members) the fee for insurance over £150 and up to £300 was £1.80 - yet there is no sign of any extra postage.

It beats me how letters which must be handed over the counter at a Post Office ever get processed with insufficient postage.

I don't have any ideas - other than the obvious one that somebody made a mistake - there's no obvious sign of missing stamps.

Does anybody else have any idea?

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Premium services: registered post, special delivery, and recorded delivery

The fee for registration and special delivery was 3 shillings on top of the basic letter rate, but there was no 3s stamp.

Special Delivery 1967 - 4d brown and 2 x 1/6d Machins


Registered 1970 - 5d blue and 2 x 1/6d Machins with a nice Burnham Market village registration label. Even now the permanent population is less than 1,000 although it is swelled all year round by visitors from London and has acquired the nick-name Chelsea-on-sea.


Recorded Delivery. Registration cost a lot of money in 1960 and there was a need for a low-cost confirmation of delivery, without the insurance element. The recorded delivery service was introduced in 1961 with an initial fee of 6d. By 1967 the fee had been increased to 9d, still considerably less than the registration fee. Recorded Delivery could also be used with second class mail from the introduction of the 2-tier system in September 1968. The letters had to be posted over the counter, but no special handling was involved until delivery and ordinary machine postmarks were applied, rather than the counter stamps used for the higher-cost services.

4d Machin and 9d Wilding, 1s Wilding and 1d Machin, 1968 (By this time Machins had been issued for all the values shown here.)



1d and 1s Machins, 1969


1st class rate 5d blue with 9d green Machin 1969


Recorded Delivery (continued) - 1st class 5d rate and 9d Recorded Fee

- paid by 2d and 1s Machins 1969


- paid by 4d centre band and 10d Machins 1968, a nice use of the 10d unfortunately on an oversize cover


- paid by a pair of 7d Machins, 1968. Possibly my favourite colour of all for Machins

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