United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Northern Ireland – London 2012 Team GB Gold Medal Winners

Introduction

The Games of XXVII Olympiad took place in and around Sydney, Australia. Australia Post issued instant stamps to celebrate gold medals won by the Australian team. The stamps had a pre-designed template which a picture of the gold medallist(s) taken during the medal presentation ceremony was added. The designs were digitally printed and made available to the public from 67 post offices across Australia by noon the following day.

In 2012, Royal Mail went one better by issuing miniature sheets with action shots of Team GB gold medal winners the day after the event took place. The medal presentation did not necessarily take place on the day of the event.

The miniature sheet was designed by True North and Royal Mail. The sheets were printed in advance by Walsall Security Print in lithography. Walsall used its subsidiary, Cartor of France, for its lithography printing.

An action photograph of the athlete(s) winning the gold medal was used for the final design. The image and captions were sent by Royal Mail to printers located across the United Kingdom. These printers printed the colour image and captions (in black ink) onto the pre-printed sheets. The finished product was delivered by courier to more than 500 post offices for sale on the day following the event. Post offices opened on Sundays to sell stamps of gold medal winners that won on a Saturday.

http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/do...0Winners.pdf

Six printers were contracted to print the image and captions:

• Aquatint bsc, Wimbledon, London


• Acorn Press, Swindon, Wiltshire


• Breckland Print (Colchester Print Group), Attleborough, Norfolk


• Crescent Press, Solihull, West Midlands


• Allander Print, Edinburgh


• B and D Print Services Limited, Leyland, Lancashire.

The printer's sheet bore an imprint in the lower left margin that included the issue number (GMW =Gold Medal Winner), issue date, and the printer location. The location of B and D Print Services Limited appeared as "Preston" on the sheets.

I must confess I had never been hoping for Team GB to miss out on gold medals as I did for the London 2012 Olympics. For the first few days, it looked like this folly would not be costing me too much money. However, on 1 August, Team GB started to win gold medals. In total Team GB won 29 gold medals.

(On a personal note, I shall be seeing two of our Dutch gold medal winners twice, this weekend.)