The gold rush is well under way as every Team GB gold medal winner is honoured with a unique set of postage stamps.

The race is on to produce the special edition stamps for sale in post offices by noon the next day and the man leading the Royal Mail charge is Marcus James from Poole.

Head of design and editorial at Royal Mail, he and his seven-strong design team had a slow start as those elusive golds failed to come home for the first few days.

But now they are coming thick and fast, with Dorset marksman Peter Wilson among the first to feature in a photo on a first class stamp and now Lymington sailor Ben Ainslie.

“We seem to be on a roll with the medals now, which is great news,” said Marcus, 44, who lives at Canford Heath with wife Carol and daughter Daisy, eight, who are not seeing much of him during the 16 days of London 2012.

“This is a unique thing for us,” said Marcus.

“Royal Mail has never done next day stamps before. It’s quite an unusual challenge.

“It’s right for the Olympics to want to celebrate that as quickly as possible so people can enjoy it.”

A live feed from official photographer Getty Images enables the design team to work quickly on a suitable action image.

While the Australians were the first to produce next-day Olympic stamps in 2000, theirs used photos of podium shots.

“We wanted something a lot more challenging and capture a defining moment of the medal,” he said.

Normally a special set of stamps, such as those celebrating Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit characters, would be developed over 18 months and an essential part of the process is royal approval from the Queen, which has been given in advance.

The team has rehearsed and tested the process and is able to deal with multiple golds.

Printed at six secret locations, a nearly 100-strong fleet of vans ships the gold medal stamps to 518 post offices for sale to the public by noon the next day, including Alder Road, Parkstone and Bournemouth’s Lansdowne Crescent, Seamoor Road and Wimborne Road , Winton.

The stamps are also available by visiting royalmail.com/goldmedalstamps