Smilers is the name given to Britain's

personalised stamps A personalised (or personalized) stamp is a postage stamp on which, for a fee, an image and/or text of the purchaser's choosing may be placed. The stamps vary from country to country, and while some are normal stamps with a personalised label on t ...

. Personalised stamp sheets (or P-Stamps) were first issued by

Australia Post Australia Post, formally the Australian Postal Corporation, is the government business enterprise that provides postal services in Australia. The head office of Australia Post is located in Bourke Street, Melbourne, which also serves as a post o ...

in the summer of 1999.

History

Personalized stamp sheets were first issued by the

Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

(subsequently renamed Royal Mail) to coincide with

The Stamp Show 2000 The Stamp Show 2000 was an international stamp exhibition held 22-28 May 2000 at Earl's Court Exhibition Centre in London. The show included the first personalized stamp sheets from the British Post Office, now generally known as Smilers sheets. ...

, Britain's international

stamp exhibition A philatelic exhibition is an exhibition of stamps and postal history where stamp collectors (philatelists) compete for medals. The displays are shown in glass frames, and the exhibition is normally accompanied by stamp dealer bourses and post o ...

held in May 2000 at

Earls Court Earl's Court is a district of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in West London, bordering the rail tracks of the West London line and District line that separate it from the ancient borough of Fulham to the west, the ...

. The "Smilers" A4-sized stamp sheets contained ten se-tenant "smiles" stamps with a generic label design. Personalised versions of these stamp sheets were made available to the public at special photo-booths throughout the 2000 Stamp Show held in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. The cost for a single sheet of ten stamps and personalised photo labels was £5.95 (£10.00 for two sheets; equivalent to a premium of £4.80 on the cost of twenty stamps). The cost in March 2008 was £13.50 per single sheet of twenty first-class stamps or £12.50 for two or more sheets (a premium of £6.70 over face value).Howard, Graham; Potts, Chris. ''Customised Stamp Sheets of Great Britain'', Ridgewood Publishing, 2007. . This service proved popular to visitors attending the show, arguably due to its novelty value, but later attempts to continue the Smilers sheet format with other stamp designs was initially not so popular. This can be attributed to the novelty value having worn off and the premium charged above face value. As a result, the subsequent four or five Smilers sheet issues are now scarce. The 2000

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

sheets featured designs of a

robin Robin may refer to: Animals * Australasian robins, red-breasted songbirds of the family Petroicidae * Many members of the subfamily Saxicolinae (Old World chats), including: **European robin (''Erithacus rubecula'') **Bush-robin **Forest rob ...

in the aperture of a

pillar box A pillar box is a type of free-standing post box. They are found in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories, and, less commonly, in many members of the Commonwealth of Nations such as Cyprus, India, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Malta, New Ze ...

and

Father Christmas Father Christmas is the traditional English name for the personification of Christmas. Although now known as a Christmas gift-bringer, and typically considered to be synonymous with Santa Claus, he was originally part of a much older and unrel ...

holding a

Christmas cracker Christmas crackers are festive table decorations that make a snapping sound when pulled open, and often contain a small gift, paper hat and a joke. They are part of Christmas celebrations in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Commonwealth countri ...

that had first appeared in 1995 and 1997. The 2001 sheets were even less popular when issued, as they featured those same designs again, the only difference being the addition of the word "Smilers" and the name '' Consignia'' in place of ''Post Office'' on the

selvage A selvage (US English) or selvedge (British English) is a "self-finished" edge of a piece of fabric which keeps it from unraveling and fraying. The term "self-finished" means that the edge does not require additional finishing work, such as hem ...

. As an alternative to the personalised version, using a photo or image provided by the purchaser, Royal Mail also produce sheets with pre-designed "generic" labels at a much lower premium. In 2002 the Post Office registered the name Smilers as their branded name for their personalised stamp service. The name derives from its use on the first British personalised stamp sheet of a set of 10 stamps that first appeared in a Greetings Booklet issued in 1990. They were referred to as "Smiles" stamps because they featured famous smiles with which people could identify. The Greetings Booklet comprised a pane of 10 stamps and a separate sheet of labels with greetings such as "Hello", which could be affixed separately on the envelope alongside the stamp, in effect the forerunner of the se-tenant stamp sheets issued at The Stamp Show 2000.

Stamp details

The stamp designs are taken from the 1990 Greetings booklet stamps. * Issue date: 22 May 2000 * Stamp design: Greetings "Smiles" * Quantity: 10 × 1st

NVI NVI or nvi may refer to: * nvi, a text editor * Avial NV, an airline * ''no value indicator'', a non-denominated postage stamp * Navoiy Airport, in Uzbekistan * Negative volume index, a financial analysis method * ''Nationale Vliegtuig Industrie'' ...

* Sheet design: The Post Office * Printed by: House of Questa * Printing method:

photogravure Photogravure (in French ''héliogravure'') is a process for printing photographs, also sometimes used for reproductive intaglio printmaking. It is a photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained (adding a pattern to the plate) and ...

Perforations A perforation is a small hole in a thin material or web. There is usually more than one perforation in an organized fashion, where all of the holes collectively are called a ''perforation''. The process of creating perforations is called perfor ...

: 15 × 14

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smilers Sheet Postage stamps of the United Kingdom Philatelic terminology