Over the course of the Olympic Games, Royal Mail has issued stamps to mark the achievements of all Team GB gold medal winners. There have been seven featuring Scottish competitors so far.

The stamps were designed, printed and issued within a time frame of 24-hours or less, in order to be on sale in selected Post Offices the day after each medal achievement.

There are two stamps featuring Sir Chris Hoy (one for his cycling keirin gold, and one with his team-mates winning the team sprint) and one of Andy Murray.

Katherine Grainger, Heather Stanning (rowing) Tim Baillie (canoeing) and Scott Brash (show jumping) appear alongside their team-mates.

In order to produce the stamps at top speed, Royal Mail used images supplied by the official Olympics photographer, Getty Images, which were available to designers within 20 minutes each a medal being won.

Marcus James, Royal Mail's head of design, said: "The big challenge for the design team here is to try and select the most defining moment of that particular win. The biggest job is in the cropping and refining the image. There is a lot of quite specialist re-touching."

Along with the stamps, Royal Mail has been marking Olympic achievements by decorating post boxes gold in gold medal winners’ home towns.

In Dunblane, where Andy Murray grew up, this move backfired after souvenir hunters picked the paint from his box - seemingly to gain a memento of the tennis player’s historic win.

The commemorative stamps are available in selected Post Offices and online from www.royalmail.com/goldmedalstamps