Once a gold is secured, Royal Mail officials have just one hour to review images submitted by official Olympic photographers Getty Images and select one to give to the eight-strong stamp design team in London.

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This thought came to me when I watched a commercial for a company that encouraged people to mail in their gold jewelry with the promise of an envelope with a fat check mailed back to them.

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Most recently, he signed on as spokesman for a new mail-in service called Gold Promise, backed by NYSE-listed pawn broker Cash America.

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Last summer, Royal Mail rushed out stamps of all gold medal winners from Team GB and Paralympics GB, within 24 hours of each athlete's victory.

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Royal Mail has said the three post boxes painted gold to honour the achievements of Northern Ireland's paralympians will be permanently gold.

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As with all GB gold medal winners from this summer's London Paralympics and Olympics she had a post box in her home town painted gold, becoming the first Paralympian to be honoured by Royal Mail after she won the Women's C5 Pursuit.

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And rapper producer Pharrell Williams proved even mundane tasks like e-mail could be blinged out when he showed off his gold-plated BlackBerry.

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Royal Mail announced in November the 110 repainted postboxes in Britain would remain gold permanently.

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You would not give your Gold Amex to a stranger in the street, so don't e-mail its numb er to any old website.

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Meanwhile, Royal Mail has painted itself into something of a corner with another pledge - to paint a postbox gold in each of the medallists' home towns.

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