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
n 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.
