Slashdot Mirror
UK Issues High-tech Stamps
bgood writes: "According to this story on Excite@Home, the UK's Royal Mail has released a series of "interactive" stamps. Included in the series: A scratch-and-sniff stamp, a stamp with a hologram, and another that shows an electrically-charged particle when warmed by finger heat. The stamps commemorate 100 years of the Nobel Prize and Britain's achievements. The Royal Mail describes the stamps here."
The thing about these stamps is that the Royal Mail probably expect to make quite a lot of money out of selling First Day Covers to stamp collectors.
The revenue they get from doing this is going to be more than enough to subsidise the cost of production. And probably goes to keeping the costs of mail delivery down.
"Information wants to be paid"
No, it's not a waste of money, just like having nice colourful Christmas stamps is not a waste of money, and paying good contemporary artists to design new stamps is not a waste of money. It's something that makes the world nicer and more interesting. I don't want all my stamps to be identical monochrome squares.
Now, what IS is a massive waste of money is rebranding the post office's holding company as 'Consignia' instead of 'post office counters ltd'. That was fucking stupid.
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