EDI Postal

 For many years, Scout movements in the UK have offered "Scout Post" services in which they deliver mainly greeting cards during the Christmas season. These offer a cheaper and charitable alternative to Royal Mail while sending cards locally.  While the peak of these ended many years ago, and the Edinburgh one has been defunct for over 15 years, these still do occasionally pop up. This year, the nearest one to me that I could find was in Fife. Fife Scout Christmas Post poster for 2025    I don't live in fife, but I left an envelope with a Royal Mail stamp and a post-it note asking for them to forward it here, after paying the 50p donation. Unfortunately no paper stamps were available, you just threw in a donation and chucked the envelope in a transparent box. Cover with "SCOUTPOST" pictorial postmarks forwarded to Edinburgh     I also sent a few to an address in the area which I later picked up.    Cover with "SCOUTPOST" pictorial postmark sent t...

 Hi.  This one is quite a bit older compared to the stuff I did previously.     I used a "Registered letter" valued at 69p to pay part of the £2.77 2nd class signed for letter rate. The rest is paid by a 2L horizon label.   I don't know exactly how old this envelope is. It has to be after decimalisation as it gives the value in "p" and not "d", but I believe it must be from the 70's or early 80's if it is old enough to be from days when less less than todays 2nd class rate could pay for a registered item that was seemingly considered quite large. The back calls it an "H" size envelope.  It was actually a bit of a chore finding an envelope made post-decimal, without half pennies to avoid confusion from my postal clerk, without extra pre-barcode machins stuck on or hand-stamps for revaluation, that was big enough to have both a Horizon label and modern Signed For label.  Unfortunately the Mail Centre did not apply a machine postmark, an...

 Hi.   I haven't seen any recent lists of service indicators used on Post Office Horizon labels, so I've made one, based on existing older ones.   I used a number of sources, including postagelabelsuk.com, norphil.co.uk, stu1967.co.uk and eBay.   I'm not sure on details regarding some of them, but I hope I'm not missing a lot of the codes.   I am trying to get as much of these as possible, and there is also different variations such as Welsh language labels, tax codes, the actual labels, fonts, etc. without even mentioning the 2d barcod type labels and miscellaneous others.    1st/1af    RM      1st Class - Now only Articles for the Blind 1L     RM     1st Class Letter     Usage restricted to Recorded Signed For 2L     RM     2nd Class Letter     Usage restricted to Recorded Signed For 1LG     RM     1st Class...

 Hi.  This is following on from a post I made recently about postal experiments and covers I sent during my trip to Gibraltar this year.  Here I will follow on with covers I got from the time I spent in Spain.  Unfortunately I was not able to send anything with Post&Go stamps, as none of the offices (including a very big one in central Malaga) did not have a kiosk.  I'm not showing all covers, just the more interesting ones.   Postby.me Postby.me is a tourist-oriented postal operator similar to UniversalMail in the UK. However, it accepts envelopes, not just postcards, and from what I've read attatching multiple stamps could even get it to deliver larger items; I did not test this, and I'm not sure how one would post this considering the mailboxes I saw had very thin slots for inserting letters.   Regular postbyme stamp sent from regular postbyme green postbox.             Interestingly it has aquired an inkj...

 Hi.  During October, I took a trip to Spain and Gibraltar, from where I sent a number of covers to myself as postal experiments and more.  I also planned a few things which I wasn't able to complete: Gibraltar postal order - I forgot :) Post & Go Gibraltar -  kiosk no longer present at central post office, no time to check parcel PO SSK Large Letter 100g+ label - same as P&G  Sending from Gibraltar with a Spanish stamp  Spain ATM stamp (post&go) - kiosk not present at offices I visited Phonecards Gibraltar - forgot, but no sign of being available Gibraltar payphone usage - payphones present, but those which I tried did not work :/  Swiss post tourist operaror Gibraltar - seemingly no longer present In case anyone ever wonders and searches the internet for ages like I did , apart from the seemingly now collectors-only Post & Go stamps, there is also no counter-printed ATM labels in Gibraltar, like UK horizon labels. At least in my exper...

 Hi.   Franking machines, as a method of paying for mail, has been used by mainly mid-sized companies and business for many years. A franking impression is printed or pressed  (on older systems) onto a piece of paper, instead of a stamp, but working similar to one. This is presumably recorded and reported to the postal authority to charge the user. They are often at a discount from the regular private postal rates, sometimes depending on the volume of mail sent. Larger organizations or companies often use PPI's or Postage Paid Impressions, which are typically pre-printed onto envelopes and tend to be significantly less interesting.    The contemporary British version of such impressions, similarly to "Horizon" labels or some Post & Go kiosk products, have a sort of Service Indicators displayed alongside a barcode, code, value, Royal Mail logo, date, and sometimes return address. I have been saving covers using these for a while, as they are an interesting bu...