“Post Office Missed” Private Presentation Packs by David Miller

I have always wondered about the Salvation Army Private Presentation Pack, pictured above, so I decided to dig around and see what I could find out.

They were produced for commemorative and definitive issues when Royal Mail did not produce an official presentation pack. They seem to fetch quite a high price on Ebay, and are sold by dealers at around the £12.50 mark. Not a bad price for a set that costs but a few pence!

It may be reasonable to assume that, in the case of the Salvation Army issue, these were issued along with the stamps in 1965, but this is most definitely not the case. None of the 16 different packs that were produced were released at the same time as the stamps. A full list of these “private” packs is below. The set of 16 is available on the internet at the incredible price of £95.00!

1937 Coronation
1951 Festival of Britain 
1965 Salvation Army
1965 Arts
1965 Lister 
1965 United Nations 
1965 ITU
1966 Landscapes
1966 Football World Cup - England Winners 
1967 Chichester 
1967 Christmas 
1969 Ghandi 
1975 Charity
1976 10p Booklet Pane (January)
1976 10p Booklet Pane (March)
1977 Silver Jubilee 9p Value

My research shows that all these presentation packs were produced in the late 1970’s in issues of 2,000 for each stamp issue by a company in Eastbourne. A nice little earner indeed given that a total of 32,000 packs were produced!

As most of you will know, I wholeheartedly disapprove of this sort of thing. All that has been done is to greatly increase the “value” of the stamps by the addition of a piece of printed card!!!!! Is this a fake? If sold honestly with full information then no, but most of these that I have seen for sale make no mention of the fact that they were produced up to 40 years after the issue of the stamps.