A Gold Medal stamp for each ParalympicsGB individual or team

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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Following the great success of TeamGB at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Royal Mail has announced it will produce a stamp for each individual or team ParalympicsGB gold medal win

This will be the first time ever any host country has issued Gold Medal stamps for their Paralympic winners since the movement was founded in 1948 at Stoke Mandeville Hospital by Dr Ludwig Guttmann

The stamps will be on sale at 518 dedicated Post Offices across the UK within five working days of each gold medal win and thereafter at a further 5,000 branches

The Gold Medal stamps will be presented for purchase as a sheet of two First Class stamps for £1.20. The sheet carries additional information on the winning athlete or athletes. The stamps can also be bought individually at Post Offices.

Royal Mail will also turn one of it historic post boxes gold in the hometown of every ParalympicsGB gold medallist just as it did for TeamGB winners during the Olympic Games

The main image of the stamp will, wherever possible, be a photograph of the ParalympicsGB athlete or team from their gold medal winning journey or following their win

Royal Mail has a proud history of commemorating the London Olympic Games, having issued 29 gold medal stamps for the London 2012 Olympic Games, as well as four stamps for the 1948 Games bearing the five Olympic Rings.


Following the success of TeamGB at the London 2012 Olympics and in response to public demand, Royal Mail is gearing up to continue to paint the UK gold with gold post boxes and individual Gold Medal stamps for the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

Royal Mail will issue individual first class stamps for each ParalympicsGB individual or team gold medal winner. The stamps will be on sale in 518 dedicated Post Offices across the UK within five working days of each gold medal win and at a further 5,000 branches thereafter.

The Gold Medal stamps will be presented for purchase as a sheet of two First Class stamps for £1.20. The sheet carries additional information on the winning athlete or athletes. The stamps can also be bought individually at Post Offices for 60p each.

This will be the first time ever that a set of stamps have been issued to celebrate Paralympic gold medallists from the host country. On 29 August, Royal Mail will also become the first postal administration whose country is hosting the Games to issue a set of stamps to celebrate the start of the Paralympic Games.

This summer, around 4,200 athletes from 160 countries are expected to attend the Paralympic Games, with 471 medal events on the programme spread across 21 sports. At the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, ParalympicsGB won 42 gold medals.

Andrew Hammond, Managing Director, Royal Mail Stamps, said: “Following the great success of TeamGB at the Olympics, the popularity of Royal Mail’s Gold Medal stamps and the way in which our gold post boxes have captured the public imagination, we have decided to commemorate ParalympicsGB’s achievements in the same way.

“We believe this is the right thing to do.

“Just as our Olympians outperformed expectations, we are confident that our Paralympians will also outperform. That would see us issuing many more individual stamps than the 29 printed over the London 2012 Olympics fortnight. This is a huge logistical challenge and we will get the Gold Medal stamps for sale as quickly as possible to a network of Post Office branches around the country and certainly within five working days of a win.

“We are excited about our Paralympics Gold Medal stamps programme, which represents the greatest logistical challenge in stamps production ever undertaken by any postal administration.

“The stamps will be a wonderful way for people across the country to celebrate ParalympicsGB’s gold medal wins and help mark their amazing achievement. Royal Mail is proud to be involved in this once in a lifetime event and to provide financial support to the UK’s talented athletes.”

Tim Hollingsworth, Chief Executive Officer, British Paralympic Association, said: “We are delighted that the offer has been increased to enable individual stamps to celebrate our athletes' achievements and thank Royal Mail for reconsidering this proposal. We hope that the whole nation will continue their support of British athletes and cheer us on to many gold medals."

Royal Mail has a long association with the British Paralympic Association. In 1992, Royal Mail was the official sponsor of the British Olympic and Paralympic teams, at the Barcelona games. This year, in support of ParalympicsGB, Royal Mail donated £200,000 to the British Paralympics Association, which will be shared equally among all ParalympicsGB gold medallists.

For more information contact:

Mish Tullar on 07423 524154 or mish.tullar@royalmail.com
Notes to editors

1. In Beijing, ParalympicsGB won 42 gold medals over 10 days of competition, including nine in one day, and an even higher world-class level of performance is expected from our athletes this time around. As a result, it is not logistically feasible for Royal Mail to produce individual stamps for sale within 24 hours of each gold medal win. We’ll get the stamps for sale as quickly as possible to dedicated Post Office branches around the country and certainly within five working days of a win.

2. Regular Order Customers of Special Stamps who purchased the full set of 29 Gold Medal stamps featuring TeamGB gold medal winners at the London 2012 Olympic Games will be offered the set of ParalympicGB Gold Medal stamps at a discounted rate.

3. Royal Mail will paint gold one of its iconic red post boxes in the home town of every ParalympicGB gold medal winner.

4. Ahead of London 2012, Royal Mail released three Olympic and Paralympic Special Stamp issues. These feature 9 Paralympic events, including Wheelchair Tennis, Paralympic Sailing, Boccia, and Goalball. Of the four definitive stamps issued for the Games, two are Paralympic Games stamps.

[Lounge Lizard]

Royal Mail’s U turn in deciding to issue stamps for each GB Paralympic gold medal might stave off criticism for not being politically correct but it is misguided and not in Royal Mail’s long term interests. Others on this forum have rightly commented that these Paralympic gold medal stamps will only sell in small numbers but whether this issue is profitable or not is insignificant, it’s the further damage to Britain’s reputation as a stamp issuing nation that will far outweigh any short term publicity or financial benefits. Selling stamps to collectors has rightly earned Royal Mail a considerable amount of money, especially over the last fifty or so years, but this has been based on a credible policy of issuing stamps with not too many special issues each year and the expectation that a reasonable proportion of each issue will be postally used. Sales to collectors reached a peak around 1990 and even then there was criticism that around ten issues totalling about three to four dozen new ‘special’ stamps a year was too many. Stamp collecting has, for a number of reasons, waned not just in Britain since then but Royal Mail’s answer to selling fewer of each issue has been to make more issues each year resulting in a vicious circle, more and more collectors understandably abandoning the hobby as more and more new issues come out each year and so on. I doubt if there are any collectors that don’t think that the recent hundred or more ‘special’ stamps a year is too many and Royal Mail itself announced in April that from “feedback from our customers .... we have reviewed our stamp programme going forward with a commitment to reducing the number of issues and will be issuing 12 special stamp issues in 2013. We are also reviewing the postage values used on the stamps to keep the collection relevant and affordable”, stable door and horse bolted sadly springing to mind. A dozen miniature sheets a year, solely for collectors not postal use, and the 95p premium since last year in the cost of ‘Prestige Stamp Books’, the only source of certain varieties of Machin definitives, are recent examples of killing the goose that lays the golden egg, and these Paralympic gold medal stamps, bringing the total number of stamps for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics to about 130 ( 4 in 1948, none in 1908 ), is further short-sightedness that will be the last straw for many more long suffering collectors of British stamps.

[ElvisGaddafi]

Royal Mail’s U turn in deciding to issue stamps for each GB Paralympic gold medal might stave off criticism for not being politically correct but it is misguided and not in Royal Mail’s long term interests. Others on this forum have rightly commented that these Paralympic gold medal stamps will only sell in small numbers but whether this issue is profitable or not is insignificant, it’s the further damage to Britain’s reputation as a stamp issuing nation that will far outweigh any short term publicity or financial benefits. Selling stamps to collectors has rightly earned Royal Mail a considerable amount of money, especially over the last fifty or so years, but this has been based on a credible policy of issuing stamps with not too many special issues each year and the expectation that a reasonable proportion of each issue will be postally used. Sales to collectors reached a peak around 1990 and even then there was criticism that around ten issues totalling about three to four dozen new ‘special’ stamps a year was too many. Stamp collecting has, for a number of reasons, waned not just in Britain since then but Royal Mail’s answer to selling fewer of each issue has been to make more issues each year resulting in a vicious circle, more and more collectors understandably abandoning the hobby as more and more new issues come out each year and so on. I doubt if there are any collectors that don’t think that the recent hundred or more ‘special’ stamps a year is too many and Royal Mail itself announced in April that from “feedback from our customers .... we have reviewed our stamp programme going forward with a commitment to reducing the number of issues and will be issuing 12 special stamp issues in 2013. We are also reviewing the postage values used on the stamps to keep the collection relevant and affordable”, stable door and horse bolted sadly springing to mind. A dozen miniature sheets a year, solely for collectors not postal use, and the 95p premium since last year in the cost of ‘Prestige Stamp Books’, the only source of certain varieties of Machin definitives, are recent examples of killing the goose that lays the golden egg, and these Paralympic gold medal stamps, bringing the total number of stamps for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics to about 130 ( 4 in 1948, none in 1908 ), is further short-sightedness that will be the last straw for many more long suffering collectors of British stamps.

And they try to say that people who collect stamps are boring!