Great Britain Commemorative Availability?

So I finally finished sorting through a box of Great Britain stamps I picked up back in February. Turned out to contain a LOT of duplicates, but I got a lot of stamps I didn't have yet, as my Great Britain collection is still in it's infancy. As I was going through my album adding the stamps, I began to notice that for the most part they issued stamps in groups of 3 to 5 stamps, usually not all the same face value. And I was realizing that what I got out of the assortment in the box was pretty much the first and lowest value stamp in almost every group. I got a few full sets, or maybe two from a set, but mainly the first stamp from almost every set from about 1970 to 1995.

My question is, for those of you better educated in Great Britain stamps than I, are the higher valued stamps in all of these sets harder to find? Are the lower value stamps in these sets the workhorse values at the time of their issuance, and that's why I have so many of those now? Is it going to be difficult to fill out many of these sets with used stamps?

Now that my GB stamp album is up to date, I can tackle my box of Canada material!

Dave, many West European countries issue their stamps that way. The loest value is usually for a domestic post card, and the next one for a regular letter. And yes, the higher values are scarcer - they are for more 'unusual' denominations. The highest one is usually for a foreign destination.

Peter

Pertert4522...Sounds like I'll have my hands full trying to find used copies of the higher value stamps in these sets. And now I have a box full of dupes to trade!

You will see what Peter said even more explicitly when as some sets have values denominated 2nd (class) or 1st (class) or E to Europe). If the stamps in a mixture were harvested in the UK, then you aren't going to find a lot of E's.