Philatelic Society
THE LOUGHBOROUGH & District Philatelic Society are back with a full programme of interesting meetings and displays arranged by their president, Mrs. Christine Harris.
The first meeting was on September 16 with an AGM that covered two years. Two main alterations regarding the officers of the Society were made, namely, Mrs. Christine Harris will become the new secretary and Rowland Tatton the treasurer.
Afterwards, members were entertained by David Gabe who produced a display commemorating 250 years of the great composer Beethoven which consisted of not only stamps, but cards and covers. These were beautifully presented, which, along with David’s commentary, made a very interesting evening to start the new philatelic year off.
The first general meeting was on Thursday 30th September, when members were invited to bring along their latest acquisitions. Those who displayed were:
Colin Butler who produced a number of A4 sheets of a variety of stamps from all over the world. Each sheet headed with the date of the year of issue of the stamps displayed on that sheet.
He also set a question by asking members if they could find out “what the connection was between the stamps and the sheets they were displayed on?”
The answer being given at the end when everyone had viewed the displays. Next came Ray Tomkins with an unusual Caerphilly postmark. He was followed by Chas Ford who produced three large covers from the USA. Each one having a strip of stamps, plus blocks of four, plus singles. None of them had been franked and each cover bore a label “NON MACHINABLE”. He was followed by our new member Andrew Higson FRPSL. Who gave everyone a hand-out that provided information of the scanned copies of his main interest titled, “From Swaziland to eSwatini”? Garth Taylor then presented an unusual display of correspondence from a Marian Falkowski, (a Polish gentleman) , that had been received by his father, (who was a Seed Manager) during1940-1950, that included Registered and Airmail covers, one of which had a set of Polish stamps that apparently were not listed in any catalogue. Brian Buck came next with some colourful sheets of stamps and booklets of Comic characters, produced by the Royal Mail.
Derek Whitmore then displayed a mini-sheet of large format GB 2nd class stamps with a Bar Code printed at the right-hand side of each stamp. Apparently an experiment by the Royal Mail to speed up their recognition/ accounting system.
He also displayed some pre-issue stamps that were intended to be used for the 2020 National Exhibition, which of course had to be cancelled due to Covid-19. Also displayed was a sheet of 1d black stamps issued to celebrate the 180th anniversary of their issue. These however had “1st Class” printed in place of the ‘One
Penny’ on stamps originally issued in 1841.
Trevor Harris followed with an interesting collection of Postal History of the Isle of Sheppey off the Kent Coast. These included pre-postage stamp letters, postal stationery of Sheerness, and some covers with slogans. Garth Taylor then gave part 2 of his display by displaying covers and items from various seed merchants from Australia, Chile, Ecuador, USA, Canada and Germany sent to Messrs Garton’s, Seed Merchants, in which his father was employed as a Seed Manager. (See the previous report on his first display) Finally came our president, Christine Harris with a collection of Censored Mail to and from India during WWII, with a variety of Censor marks from Field Post Offices, plus US Army mail and Air letters from Ceylon.
The next meeting will be on Thursday (October 14) when members will be asked to present items for “What Else Do You Collect?”
NB. The answer to Colin Butler’s question. The stamps of each country being displayed on the sheets had the same Gibbons Stamp Catalogue number as the date on the sheet they were displayed on!