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2010 News |
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President’s Evening 23 June 2010
David and the ever-supporting Claire entertained 14 other members at another splendid evening. Richard Gash supplemented the proceedings with his popular stockbooks, boxes and sales of stamps and covers.
Our President’s theme was GB Postage Dues on cover. Special features of postage due as opposed to ordinary postage stamps are: · there are far fewer of them, · there has to be some sort of explanation of why there is ‘more to pay’, · they cannot be bought mint from the post office; so collectors have either to wait to receive or buy letters wrongly stamped, or they must contrive their use by deliberately posting wrongly stamped letters to their friends. Which are all reasons why covers with these stamps are so fascinating.
Causes of demands for extra payment by the letter receiver include: · the common cause of affixing insufficient postage or forgetting to put on a stamp altogether, · the same reason on letters received from abroad, · particularly in the early days, insufficient postage for the weight of the letter, such as exceeding half an ounce, · to claim payments for letters returned to the sender, · non-acceptance of stamps disrespectfully affixed, e.g. with the monarch’s head upside down, · non-acceptance of stamps produced by unrecognised political regimes, in particular those of (Southern) Rhodesia after its unilateral declaration of independence.
There have been a wide variety of ways in which envelopes have been marked to indicate the postage faults. We were also shown examples of ordinary GB stamps used in lieu of postage due ones.
The only series of stamps which cannot be easily collected and shown on cover are the attractive multicoloured set issued in Britain in 1994, just before the use of these stamps began to be phased out.
A fine end to the 2009/10 Bix season.
Visit by Peter Denly 9 June 2010
Fourteen members welcomed Peter Denly and his colleague, who had come over from Bishops Stortford. Peter gave two fascinating displays. Postmarks of the British Empire comprised covers franked with slogan postmarks related to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 and 1925. To some of us the subject was hugely nostalgic, not that we are so old that we attended the exhibition but that most of us have copies of the 1d and 1 1/2d stamps issues for the Exhibition in those two years. Some of us remember the buildings remaining until well after the War; and the original ‘ferro-concrete’ Palace of Industry still stands. The exhibition had been proposed in 1911 but there was growing international tension at the time so it was postponed. London’s previous exhibition site at the White City was considered too small and Sir Edward Watkin, Chairman of the Metropolitan and other railways, proposed the area known as Wembley Park in Middlesex.
There had been a competition for the design of the commemorative postage stamps. It was eventually won by a reserve entry from Harold Nelson (who also designed the PUC £1). 13 million of the 1924 stamps were issued, largely for use with Exhibition postcards. The demand for both was much less for the 1925 issue.
The slogan postmarks were those advertising the exhibition and most incorporated its main symbol, the sitting lion. A great variety of these were shown, produced by different sorts of franking machinery, hand made or hand stamped, some very local some collected from post boxes at the Exhibition and franked together, first at Eversholt Street near Euston, later at Mount Pleasant central sorting office.
The British Empire Exhibition slogan postmark was then authorized for use in all the countries of the Empire represented at the exhibition. All these countries took advantage of this except Canada, even though that country had very prominent exhibits. Peter Denly showed a wide range of examples of these empire country frankings. One, from Calcutta, also hinted at a film to be made of the 1924 Mount Everest expedition. The film and related celebration did not materialize because the expedition was judged unsuccessful (Malory and Irvine perished).
Man’s Marine Adventure is a freestyle thematic display of Peter Denly’s enthusiasm and lifelong experience of ships and marine operations, shown mostly on stamps. ‘Marine adventure’ comes from the introductory wording of any marine insurance policy, emphasizing the hazards and perils of the sea. His display was in two parts: · Ships, from dhows to a host of more modern powered ships or special purpose vessels, e.g. the first ‘cruise’ ship, also one designed specially to carry opium. · Marine adventure (exploration, navigation and shipwrecks) and safeguards (lighthouses and rescue services), all material of great historical interest on many fine stamps.
Newsletter April 2010
Hello Everyone,
I can’t believe that we are nearly at the end of our year but before then we have various meetings to look forward to and also the Very Important Auction – open to everyone.
To make it even more successful than last year we would still like to have some more Lots so if you haven’t already given us some perhaps you could find us some nice material that is no longer required for your collection? If you are unable to actually bring it to Dave, Malcolm or myself I am sure we can arrange to pick it up from you!
We already have some very nice items but many of them have been put in by people that have nothing to do with the club – it is really kind of them but we do need to be a little more ‘self-sufficient’.
May 26 is the date for The Auction at Bix and the doors will open at 6.45 for viewing. If you are unable to get to us but would like a catalogue please let me know. Bidding can be done by post or the website too. I look forward to having to do some more ‘lotting up’ with Malcolm and Dave when we have received your items.
April 28, this week, is the competition evening with ‘silent auction’.
May 12 is the AGM and Auction viewing. Bring along some ideas of speakers for next year + their contact numbers please, (not their web addresses).
May 26 – Open Auction for members, friends et al.
June 9 we are fortunate in having Peter Denly from Hertfordshire coming to give 2 displays – ‘Postmarks of the British Empire Exhibition’ and ‘Man’s Marine Adventure’. He has some superb material and is an excellent raconteur.
June 23 We finish the year, as usual, with out President’s Evening, a rumour tells me there may be a glass of wine during the evening, Richard Gash will be there as our dealer for the evening, – bring your wants list and your wallet and Dave will be providing the ‘entertainment’! It is always a good evening so do come along.
Looking forward to receiving your lots and to seeing you at the Auction or hearing, from Dave, that you have put a bid in! Don’t forget to keep your eye on the website catalogue – it is being added to all the time.
With best wishes –
Anne (on behalf of the committee)
Visit by Pinner Philatelic Society 14 April 2010
Fifteen members welcomed members of Pinner who presented Mediterranean Knights, Italian stamps in World War II and postcards of Cumbria.
The Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem were also known as the Hospitallers. Although the order was originally formed to help and protect Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, they set up hospitals from 1099 and – besides being obviously classified as Crusaders in that they fought off or attacked the Turkish Muslims for centuries – they continued their role in care for the sick right up to the modern St John’s Ambulance Brigade.
The Order moved from Jerusalem to Acre, to Rhodes (where they stayed for over 200 years), to Malta (another 268 years), to Trieste and eventually to their current headquarters in Rome.
The Order is particularly commemorated in the stamps of Malta; but they have also, since 1966 issued their own stamps. These stamps have not been recognized by UPU or Stanley Gibbons. The stamps of Italy issued between 1943 and 1946 included: · American stamps issued for US forces at the time of the landings in Sicily in 1943 – intended for use in various countries as the Allies advanced into southern Europe, but in fact only overprinted and used in Italy. · Various ‘aerograph’ letters, which were photographed, micro-dotted for despatch and reproduced back into letters by Kodak. · Stamps issued for Mussolini’s puppet Italian Socialist Republic in the Italian Lakes area. These were mostly Italian stamps overprinted GNR or with a fascist symbol obliterating the head of King Victor Emmanuel who had signed an armistice with the Allies so that Italy were now co-belligerents against the Germans and Mussolini. The ISR also issued its own stamps for a short period. · Italian stamps overprinted by such statements as ‘Firenze welcomes the allies’, sold mainly as souvenirs to the advancing troops, to buy bread in times of great local hardship. · Stamps provided by Switzerland for an Italian conclave in that country whilst it was cut off from the rest of Italy. · The culmination of Italian national recovery with the new definitive issue of 1946. Finally, Postcards of Cumbria showed Maryport, Workington, Grange-over-Sands and then the many aspects of the Lake District before ending with illustrations of the Furness Railway and its locomotives and rolling stock, and Railway Stamps for carriage of post on trains – for the same and various other early Cumbrian railway companies.
Chairman’s Evening 24 March 2010 Four Themed Displays of Argentine Stamps
As ever, the Chairman drew on his collection of Argentine stamps for his exhibits. Members were fortified for this marathon with a choice of Argentine wine and delicacies, including home-made empanadas and milanesas.
The first display was of the booklet stamps issued by Argentina from 1987 to the present day. These varied from pragmatic chequebook-style presentations of everyday postage stamps to informative booklets containing just two or four stamps on a theme of wine or football.
The stamps from the 1987 booklets were the only Argentine stamps issued to date without a face value, reflecting a time of great currency instability. Since 1993, the basic letter tariff stabilized at 75c (equivalent to 75 US cents) and remained at this level until 2007, despite the currency collapse in 2001. It is notable that the Stanley Gibbons catalogue value of some of these booklets represents an uplift of 20 times the converted face value, even for stamps which are currently still available at face value from the Argentine Post Office! The question was raised whether any of the stamps in these themed booklets were used postally, given their very small print runs.
The second display risked descending, unusually for this chairman, into the realms of philately, for it concerned the overprinting of stamps for government use, with a wealth of printing styles, angles, colours and wording, not to mention the underlying variations of watermark, perforation and printing method of the stamps themselves. So we moved from hand-applied “OFICIAL” overprints in 1883, through the 1913 Ministerials (M.A., M.G., etc) to the riot of “SERVICIO OFICIAL” and “S. OFICIAL” that ran from 1938 until 1970, when the practice was ended and unused stock were sold off to a willing philatelic market.
The third display was humorously titled “Famous Argentines”. It could have been remarked that famous Argentines tend to be infamous. Having previously given displays on Eva Perón and General San Martín, the field was a little thin and consisted of “Che” Guevara, revolutionary, and Guillermo (William) Brown, Irish founder of the Argentine navy. Suggestions for further contenders gratefully received.
The final display was on se-tenant stamps. Despite much barracking from the floor over what a se-tenant stamp was, the Chairman proceeded on the basis that any stamp which, with adjoining stamps, made up a larger picture was se-tenant. Any wider definition would have entailed a much longer display.
The Chairman was keen to establish whether, separated from its se-tenant fellows, a stamp still retained the integrity of the message of the se-tenant set. Evidently this was not always the case, particularly for some Christmas stamps. In some cases, notably a Scout-themed quadriparture, each stamp stood its own ground confidently. There was discussion on dubious Post Office practice, such as printing a single gutter label between the left and right columns of stamps and duplicating stamps on a mini-sheet, and a residual feeling that much of this material was intended for the philatelic market and not for general postal use.
Postcard Evening 10 March 2010
10th March was the date for the Club’s annual postcard meeting. Dealers Rosa and Tony Lawrence were in attendance and did brisk business. Two members’ displays included hurried additions purchased in the course of the evening.
Unusually for this event, the displays centred on the pictures on the front of the postcards, whereas in previous years some of the messages on the back have been the centre of interest. One exception was our GB used abroad member, who displayed postcards from the Levant bearing British stamps.
All but one display came from collectors. One came from a member who had actually tried to market postcards with a mountaineering theme and found that climbing mountains was not the only uphill struggle.
A few members professed to not collecting postcards at all, but managed to present a few that “they just happened to have”, either because their house was on the postcard, or because the picture featured on a stamp in their collection.
The more serious postcard collectors between them came up with displays which illustrate the breadth of interests that exists in our Club. Without images, it is only meaningful to list the subjects covered:
· South Atlantic Islands · London Scenes, including the old Euston Station, Great White City and Festival of Empire Exhibition. · Wartime Propaganda · National Postal Museum · Crete · Road and Rail Bridges (mostly Welsh) · London Parks – the Green Lungs of London · White Star Line Ocean Liners
Visit by Dr. Alan Lidiard 24 February 2010 India and Ceylon
Thirteen members welcomed Alan Lidiard and his supporters. Alan’s main collecting interest has been British Empire and Commonwealth George VI, but he has had several offshoot interests including India and Ceylon which were the subjects of the evening’s displays. In each case the stamps, photographs, explanations and a few banknotes were selected to relate to the last few millennia of history. Maps showed the extent of various eras of civilization or dynasty: · The Indus Valley Civilization, which thrived in what is now Pakistan. · The Mauryan period, notably with Emperor Aśoka who became a Buddhist and proselytised the philosophy, including to Ceylon. · The Gupta dynasty (Hindus). · The Delhi Sultanate. · The Moghul emperors, starting with Akbar.
Except for the first, all these eras extended over all northern and most of central India. The Moghul period accounts for most of the well-known structures of northern India, one of which (1/4 anna stamp, the gate of Old Delhi’s Red Fort) was shown on the first of the George V pictorial commemoratives – for the inauguration of New Delhi in 1931. All the other values showed British Raj structures.
However the Indian 7-stamp issue for George V’s Silver Jubilee was a fairer selection. After Bombay’s Gateway to India and Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial, the higher five values were respectively Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist structures. In George VI’s reign there followed the pictorial definitives depicting ways of carrying the post.
Most of the references to pre-Moghul times and purely Indian people or cultures came with Independence in 1947, starting immediately with the Independence issue 11/2 anna stamp depicting the four-headed lion which became a national symbol shown on banknotes, official stamps, etc. Thereafter India continued its fine pictorial stamp tradition with: · The 1949 definitive set of increasing sizes with increasing values, from sacred carvings through a variety of buildings to the Taj Mahal (5Rp), Qutb Minar (10Rp in two shades) and the biggest temple value (15Rp). · The 1955 5-year Plan series depicting various economic activities. · The smaller size 1957 decimal currency map-of-India set. · And various commemoratives featuring Mount Everest, centenaries, railways and telegraphs etc.
Ceylon and southern India were always blank on the maps of the northern empires. The island had been inhabited by the Singhalese, a northern people, until influenced or disrupted by Tamil incursions from the southern tip of India. Meanwhile Aśoka had sent Buddhism to Ceylon with his son and daughter and it was well established on the island, then known as Lanka, by the 1st Century AD. Ceylon and Burma are now archetypal Buddhist countries.
In postage stamps, after many years of typical British colonial issues, the pictorial tradition got going with the George V and George VI pictorial issue of the island and its activities. As in India, Ceylon continued stamp art after independence with definitives depicting scenes and objects. The 1954/58 series 25 cent is a modern redrawing of an ancient cave drawing still to be seen in a cave half way up Sigiriya Rock.
Roughly some of the above was said and a lot more by Alan Lidiard and contributors to a most enjoyable philato-historical evening.
Member Displays - Lilac - 10 February 2010
Whilst it snowed a bit outside, 13 members came to Bix to display and discuss Lilac stamps.
The most common themes centred on the British 1d lilacs used from 1881 until beyond the reign of Queen Victoria, and the ‘lilac and green’ series of 1883-4 (the Unified set, eventually superseded by the 1887 Jubilee issue) on both of which much interest was aroused.
Other Victorian ‘lilac’ GB stamps shown ranged from the 1847 embossed 6d, through the 1855 and 1862 6ds and the 1873 mauve (and blue) 21/2ds to two very fine 1884 £1 brown-lilacs and the QV and EVII half-crowns.
From our prolific specialist collectors we saw: · a collection of GB covers with a variety of early postmarks, together with an explanation as to how the Post Office attempted to increase the speed of handling and cancelling the stamps as postage became increasingly popular during the era of the 1d lilacs · examples of GB lilac stamps on letters posted abroad – from the many village post offices in Jamaica and other Caribbean places to Gibraltar, Malta and the Levant – including a substantial collection of variations down to plate numbers on GB stamps posted in Constantinople.
Revenue stamps were seldom as brightly coloured as some postage series but governments were not reticent about issuing some nice big ones. We saw examples from India, Ceylon and Zimbabwe.
Besides the usual welcome contributions from Argentina and Sarawak, we viewed other lilac or lilac-related stamps from USA (1857 24c on cover), New Zealand Chalon heads, Cape of Good Hope triangulars and, unusually in the 20th century, British QEII pictorials. Member Displays - Revenue and charity stamps 27 January 2010
The theme of the evening, enjoyed by 14 members, was “Up to 9 pages on Revenue or Charity stamps”. Having been reminded by the Chairman that 9 was a number somewhere between 8 and 10, three members came up with eight pages or less; all the others, including the Chairman, showed ten or more! So evidently he meant any number not between 8 and 10. However, as usual, a great variety of good stuff emerged from loose adherence to the topic.
Revenue stamps were shown from Iraq, Syria, Crete, Sarawak, etc. Receipt stamps for Sarawak and Hong Kong and on a host of interesting documents that required stamps to make them legal. One display showed how conventional collections of British Empire, mainly large high values, could be enhanced by including fiscally used Postage and Revenue stamps and other overprinted versions, etc.
The circumstances of the well-known British colonial War Tax stamps were fully explained. These were issued towards the end of World War I when colonial governments were authorised to do so. Whether the funds received ever went to any cause other than the post office is not known.
Iraq stamps for the Palestine Fund and other causes were in fact an obligatory tax on postage. Many of these and others were overprints or (in Japan) slightly different versions of familiar postage stamps.
Charity stamps were shown for Switzerland, New Zealand and GB (only two sets ever?). In Argentina, a lot of stamps with extra charges were in fact for philatelic jamborees. All were for Argentine national causes except one issued for the victims of a very serious earthquake (and associated Pacific tsunami) in Chile.
Cinderellas included miscellaneous labels, match box stamps, a cheque, telegraph stamps from Latin America, China, Japan; also an 1847 issue of Punch with a ‘paper tax’ mark.
We saw German income tax payment stamps, local city postage, including ‘beehives’, and 1920s propaganda concerning the loss of German colonies and certain German eastern territories like Danzig.
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