Olympic Stamps

You may have heard about Royal Mail painting postboxes gold in the hometowns of all of the UK Gold Medal winners during the Olympics, but they also honoured these Medalists in another way. The day after the Gold Medal was awarded, Royal Mail had printed commemorative stamps with the winner on them! These covers have a unique postmark featuring the Olympic Stadium address and were hand stamped on the day of issue (the day after a Team GB medal win). The stamps were printed and issued by noon of that day – quite a feat in itself.

Here’s a great story about the design and implementation of the Gold Medal Stamp scheme – usually it takes two years from starting the design to printing the stamps, but in this case, the design took an hour at the most!With 29 golds awarded in sports ranging from athletics (track and field) to canoeing, to dressage and cycling, there’s something for everyone. And there was something special for me in the post on Monday – a first day cancellation of the Bradley Wiggins stamps. In addition to winning the cycling road time trials, Wiggins had also won the Tour de France a few weeks before.

My English cousins were very impressed and told me all about the stamps and what the special Gold Medal scheme was all about. I am not sure who kindly sent the stamp set to me, as there was no note, and I didn’t recognize the handwriting, but thank you so very much! It’s a wonderful remembrance of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, and a lovely present.