Football Heroes : new stamps of Great Britain - Norvic Philatelics

Norvic Philatelics - GB New Stamps and Special Postmarks

Football Heroes - 9 May 2013

Royal Mail is issuing a set of stamps and a Miniature Sheet on 9 May to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of The Football Association as well as 140 years of The Scottish Football Association.

The stamps feature a "dream team" of legendary footballers selected from around the United Kingdom namely Gordon Banks, Bobby Moore, Dave MacKay, George Best, Kevin Keegan, Bryan Robson, John Barnes, Denis Law, Bobby Charlton, John Charles and Jimmy Greaves.

Royal Mail worked very closely with the National Football Museum and with its experts, archivists and curators, to establish a listing of the key great footballers to celebrate. The football museum itself has established a Hall of Fame and the players selected were from those who were inducted into the Hall of Fame when it began.

Royal Mail also looked at the history of UK football, but applied criteria to select players whose key senior career was within the years 1963-1990s, who will be much more familiar to present day footballers than those of earlier eras, and include many players who have a cult following and widespread agreement of genius on the pitch, such as George Best.

Football heroes miniature sheet

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The sheet is 192 x 74 mm

Back row:

Jimmy Greaves, John Charles, Gordon Banks, George Best, John Barnes,

Front row:

Kevin Keegan, Denis Law, Bobby Moore, Bryan Robson, Dave MacKay, and Bobby Charlton.

The stamps are 30 x 32mm in two sheets each of 30 stamps.

Prestige stamp book.

As PSBs tend to have at least four panes of stamps in (never 3 but sometimes 5), the 11 footballers are on two panes meaning that we have two panes of definitives. Quite honestly a primary school child could have produced a better job of these. Pane 1 is an imbalanced mish-mash. The country stamps should have been placed in the corners, or at top, left, right, and foot - not wrapped around the lower and left side. The Machins would then have been in the other 4 positions. Of course if any thought had been given to the content, the make-up pane 4 would have had some 1st class stamps in it. As it is we have a pane with a total face value of 34 pence and Royal Mail required 16p in additional postage for any FDCs of the pane.

Pane 1: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland country stamps and 2 x 1p, 2 x 1st class red Machin definitives
We expect that the Machins will have an iridescent security overprint with codes MPIL and MA12 or M13L

Pane 2: Five footballers stamps.

Pane 3: Six footballers stamps.
Pane 4: Machin definitives - 2 each 2p, 5p, 10p. As the total face value of this pane is only 34p, Royal Mail required 16p in additional postage for any FDCs of the pane.

First Retail Booklet

Self-adhesive retail booklet containing George Best and Bobby Moore stamps, and 4 x 1st Machins.

Football heroes retail booklet.

This is first book in the series; another will be issued later in the year and contain stamps showing John Charles (Wales) and Dave Mackay (Scotland).

Technical details: The 30 x 32 mm stamps & Miniature Sheet are designed by True North, with Andrew Kinsman the illustrator. In sheets of 30/60 they are printed in lithography, with all-over phosphor by Walsall Security Printers. Sheet 1 has six rows of the back rank of Footballers (Jimmy Greaves - John Barnes). Sheet 2 has five rows of the front rank of Footballers (Kevin Keegan - Booby Charlton).
The 192 x 74 mm sheet is printed in litho by Cartor Security Printing, perforated 14 x 14½.

According to the credits the prestige stamp book Machin panes are printed in gravure by Walsall (but I am assured by those who can tell, that they are not gravure), and the other two by Cartor. The definitive panes are gummed, and the footballer panes are self-adhesive. The Machin definitives have security codes M13L MPIL but the iridescent layer is a blotchy print with some of the capital M appearing as a solid rectangle. The country definitives have no security overprint.

The retail booklet is printed by Walsall SP with security code on the Machin definitives M13L MCIL.

Products available from Royal Mail (we are stocking only the definitives from the PSB)

Set of 11 stamps
Miniature sheet
Presentation Pack
Set of 12 Stamp Cards
Retail Stamp booklet
Prestige Stamp Booklet

Special Postmarks

Postmarks available for the day of issue will be shown here. These may not all be at the same scale.


Ref FD1313TH Official Philatelic Bureau FDI.	Ref FD1313PL Official Wembley FDI postmark.	Ref FD1313NP Official Wembley non- pictorial FDI postmark	Ref M12389 Gordon Banks Stoke-on-Trent	Ref M12387 Football Heroes Retail Book, Best Street, Cradley Heath

Ref L12834 Football Heroes, Jimmy Greaves, Tottenham London N17	Ref N12841 The National Football Museum, Manchester	Ref L12673 Football in and Around London - Wembley In use 28 August 2012 - 27 August 2013	Ref S12486 Football Heroes, Glasgow, Scotland	Ref W12849 Football Heroes, Cardiff, Wales

Ref M12838 Villa Road, Birmingham	Ref N12842 Sir Bobby Charlton, Old Trafford, Manchester M16, Football Heroes.	Ref N12687 Football in and Around Merseyside - Liverpool In use 28 August 2012 - 27 August 2013	Ref L12835 Football Heroes, London, England	Ref S12847 Football Heroes, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Ref L12852 Football Heroes, Wembley, London	Ref N12854 Football Heroes, Manchester	Ref N12686 Football in and Around Manchester In use 28 August 2012 - 27 August 2013	Ref S12857 Football Heroes, Glasgow

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This page created 21 May 2013

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