REGIONALS

4) The Last Machin Regionals

Scottish Thistle	Welsh Dragon

In May 1999, a new Welsh Assembly came into being. In addition the Scottish Parliament reconvened as a seperate entity after emerging from its merger with the English Parliament in 1707. This led to the issue of new designs for Wales and Scotland which replaced the previous Machin issues.

Some face values only issued in Northern Ireland

Nothern Ireland continued to use the existing Machin designs and lead to some regional values that were only issued by Northern Ireland.

In addition, Northern Ireland was to have the only NVI regional design.

When postal rates were changed, the cost of 2nd class postage actually dropped (by 1p) and saw the re-release of a previous 19p value. This had originally been printed in lithography but the re-release saw the use of photogravure.

Northern Ireland	England

The Northern Ireland regionals continued through two postal rate increases. However, the writing was on the wall ; with special regionals issued for Wales and Scotland there was demand for similar issues for Northern Ireland. And not wanting to be left out, this finally led to special issues for England.

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