Stampede

Customers queued throughout the morning at the main post office in Lendal to buy special sets of the stamps, featuring five portrait photographs of the Princess.

Extra staff were employed to cope with the huge demand, and when the post office opened its doors at 9am more than 20 people were waiting to buy the stamps, fearing they would sell out.

"The demand has been very high," said Post Office Counters spokeswoman Jenny Bradley. "Sales have been at least four times more than is usual for a first-day cover."

Many customers were philatelists keen to make sure they did not miss out on what is expected to become the biggest-selling set of stamps in history, which could have great historic value in years to come.

Others wanted to buy stamps for their children or grandchildren to keep as a special memento of the Princess or to send to friends abroad.

Alison Rafferty, of South Bank, came in with her six-year-old daughter Imogen to buy something else - and ended up buying a set for Imogen after the youngster spotted the stamps on sale.

Deborah Colley, from Holgate, bought a set for her "other half", stamp collector John Wilson, but said the Diana stamps were something special. "She is still a very special person who touched a lot of people."

Natasha Arrowsmith said she was sending her stamps to relatives overseas in Belgrade, while Isabel Morris was buying them for her grandchildren's "treasure box".

Jim Pratt, of the York philatelic club, said it was hard to forecast the real worth of the stamps, as most collectors bought them for emotional rather than monetary value.

Demand for stamps has been high across the country, and also around the world, with one customer placing an order for a million sets.

On the basis of anticipated demand and orders already received from the UK and abroad, the Post Office has already agreed a donation of at least £6 million to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.

The 26p stamps were to have gone on sale soon after Diana's funeral, but they were put on hold amid suggestions that such a move was too soon after the tragedy. More than six times the normal number of special stamps have been distributed to all 19,000 post offices to meet the expected initial demand.

Apart from the Royal Wedding stamps of July 1981, this will be the only set issued in Britain with the Princess's image on them.

The photographs of the Princess were taken by Press Association photographer John Stillwell, Lord Snowdon, Tim Graham and Terence Donovan.

They feature formal and informal poses and each stamp has a purple border as a mark of respect.

Dozens of people queued outside the Post Office in the village of Great Brington, next to Althorp, the family estate where Diana is buried, to buy the stamps.

They were waiting to snap up some of the 10,000 special Great Brington first day covers produced by village postmistress Christine Whiley.

The special commemorative pack features a design by local artist Richard Barnard, 71, showing floral tributes outside the gates of Althorp.

Mrs Whiley said 1,000 of the special packs had been ordered before 9am this morning - and orders were flooding into the Post Office in the Northamptonshire village from all over the world.

"The phone has never stopped since it became known that we were doing Great Brington first day covers," she said.

"We had a phone call at 4.30 this morning from Germany making an order."

The packs cost £10, with half of that amount going to the memorial fund.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.