27 April 2011

Royal Wedding mania is alive and well in New Zealand judging by the huge sales of the commemorative stamps issued by New Zealand Post to celebrate the impending nuptials of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

The Royal Wedding collection including stamps, first day covers, miniature sheets and presentation packs are on the verge of selling out.

New Zealand Post stamps and collectables sales and marketing manager Simon Allison says the response since the issue was launched five weeks ago has been phenomenal.

“We’ve had interest from around the globe. The level of demand is far in excess of what would be expected from our usual collectors and Royalists market.

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“People have snapped up these products as souvenirs as fast as we could produce them – it’s been huge,” he said.

Allison said the last remaining stock of presentation packs, first day covers and miniature sheets were was sent out to PostShop stores last week while the ‘sold out’ sign had gone up for mail order and online sales. Stocks of individual stamps are expected to sell out soon.

“The only product remaining is what you can see in PostShops,” said Allison.

In addition to several hundred thousand stamps being sold, a total of about 7,000 presentation packs and around 50,000 miniature sheets had flown off the shelves.

Allison said it was originally planned to produce 4,000 presentation packs, but demand meant more had to be printed.

“Our slip-up with Prince William’s birth date didn’t dent demand at all. In fact quite the opposite occurred. All but a handful of the packs with the incorrect date were sold. The numbers don’t lie – this issue has been a great success,” Allison said.

ENDS

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