The 'Secret Six' Revealed

"Royal Mail has revealed the identities of the six regional printers it used to produce celebratory stamps for each Team GB gold medal win during the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games," writes Ben Bold on the Print Week website.

Known as the 'Secret Six,' the printers produced tens of thousands of 96-stamp sheets for regions in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Some of the stamps are shown above.

According to the article, each of the printers, whose names and locations were not made public until now, were sent digital files by Royal Mail’s in-house designers of stamps bearing images of gold-winning Team GB athletes just minutes after the medals had been awarded. They then "... had to overprint the stamp images on pre-prepared base sheets, often having to work though the night in order to meet an early-morning deadline, varying from 4.30am to 7am, when Post Office couriers would pick up the stamps so that they could be on sales in Post Offices within 24 hours of gold wins."

Graeme Thurman, sales director for one of the printers, is quoted in the piece as saying, ""Within one hour of a British athlete winning a gold medal, we receive the artwork. The stamps had to be printed on all sites within an hour of that, then trimmed and collated into the unique gold medal bags and ready for the Royal Mail drivers to collect at 7am the following morning, so that they could go on sale at 9am."

To read the entire article, click here.