1999 Millennium Timekeeper
Royal Mail issued this sheet of four stamps in 1999 December to mark the impending arrival of the year 2000. North America, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe are visible in succession to convey the impression of time sweeping across the globe of the Earth as the hands of the adjoining clock tick towards midnight, eventually reaching zero hour on the Greenwich meridian. The final design may appear at first to be identical to the Timekeeping stamp issued at the start of 1999, but the clock face on this stamp is blank and the map of Europe is subtly different in scale.
As with the Timekeeping stamp, the designer of this sheet was David Gentleman, for whom it marked a personal milestone – these were his 100th, 101st, 102nd, and 103rd designs for Royal Mail. The stamps were not issued individually and the sheet has only one catalogue number.
Stanley Gibbons no. MS 2123
Below: A mounted version of the Millennium Timekeeper sheet, on a numbered silver card and date-cancelled with two Greenwich postmarks indicating the change of year from 1999 to 2000, was issued by the Royal Mail in a so-called ‘limited’ edition – of a million.
