Who's behind the Norvic name?

I'm Ian Billings, I've been collecting stamps and postal history for over 50 years, and when my career as a civil service accountant ended in redundancy in 1997 I had time to concentrate on bringing my collection into shape. As I worked my way through albums, stockbooks and boxes, I found things I had forgotten about and as well as working on my collection, I decided to sell some of the surplus. eBay seemed to be the obvious route and I needed an ID. Norvic is the Latin name for Norwich, the administrative centre for the county of Norfolk, GB, and it seemed like a good name to use.

Norvic Philatelics was created in 1998 with my first website which provided details of the new Lighthouse stamps being issued by Royal Mail, and the postmarks which would be available for use on First Day Covers. Since then I have added each new issue on its own page which means that we should by now have a library of over 100 pages of detailed modern British stamp information. And information about all new issues is added at the earliest possible moment, before it is published in the printed media or elsewhere on the internet. For British stamps and postmarks get news information and pictures from the web's No 1 resource.

While I was concentrating on new issues and First Day Covers, my son recognised the potential for alternatives to the Royal Mail covers, and since January 2003 we have been producing attractive cover designs which we have prepared in limited numbers with pictorial postmarks most appropriate to the stamp theme and designs. These can be seen on our website - norvic-philatelics.co.uk - and are available in our online shop.

My collection - and surplus material

My main collecting areas are Great Britain, British Commonwealth (mainly K.George VI), Scandinavia, 1960s Saudi Arabia, and the stamps and postal history of the ex-USSR countries, since 1991. My first website - at Geocities - contains a study of the postal history of Belarus 1991-95.

More about GB Postmarks & FDCs

All the postmarks on our GB website and all postmarks on GB FDCs have been or will be used by Royal Mail.    Some - but by no means all - are produced by the Royal Mail for the Philatelic Bureau First Day Cover service. Usually there are two of these for each stamp issue.

Why special postmarks?
Many more postmarks are sponsored by companies, organisations, or individuals, to coincide either with a new stamp issue or a national or local event. The sponsors(*) usually produce high quality first day covers with one or all of the stamps in a new issue, and these are very popular with collectors. They have also been popular with investors, although the availability now at very low prices of some originally expensive covers reaffirms that 'the value of an investment may go down as well as up'.
(*) Organisations which PAY Royal Mail a fee for each postmark to be produced to their own designs.

In addition to those produced for new stamp issues, special postmarks are produced for specific national events (e.g. the Wimbledon Tennis Championships or major stamp exhibitions), anniversaries, (e.g. the 80th anniversary of the Royal Air Force), or local events such as a local philatelic convention or scientific conference.

In these cases commemorative covers are produced, sometimes by the same major companies who are involved in special FDCs, or by the organisation concerned. These may carry ordinary definitive stamps, or they may be stamped with current or earlier commemorative stamps which have some link to the subject of the postmark.(e.g. the 1976 tennis stamp for Wimbledon, or the 1997 Architects of the Air stamps for an RAF event or anniversary). The covers are sold for a premium, with profits either being retained by the sponsoring organisation, or being donated to charities - eg for ex-servicemen.

How do I get them?
What all these postmarks have in common is that anybody can have the postmarks applied to any mail. Mail to be postmarked must be sent to the appropriate postmarking centre on or before the date of use, and is returned under separate cover to produce covers in very good condition. (NOTE: in the USA and some other countries, 30 days is allowed after the date of use of the postmark. There is no similar arrangement for Royal Mail postmarks.)

You're a Winner! - postage & packing on eBay sales

Where possible postage is paid by commemorative or high-value definitive stamps and we try to use stamps that the buyer will like. In most cases neat handstamps can be used in place of normal ugly operational postmarks. Most mail can be carefully handstamped. You not only get quality inside the packet, you get quality service on the outside as well. In return I hope buyers will also make an effort to use 'collectable' stamps, and have their remittance hand-cancelled whenever possible.

Norvic Philatelics main site

For sale: maximum cards & FDCs; postal history, picture postcards, stamps including GB new issues, etc

Postal History of the 15 countries which came out of the Soviet Union in 1991 - it's interesting stuff!

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