Return post: stamp book back in family after 50 years
A CHARITY shop worker was stunned after someone donated an old book containing handwritten notes from her own father, 50 years after his death.
Gil Oakley, 74, was tidying the bookshelves when she stumbled across a copy of Stanley Gibbons Postage Stamp Catalogue from 1956.
She had two similar ones at home as her father, Kenneth Gleave, worked for the company when she was a child.
But when Mrs Oakley opened the book, she was amazed to find his distinctive handwriting on the first page. Also in the book was a sticker from another philately company, Richard Roberts of Rutherfield, Sussex, where Mr Gleave also worked.
Not only had half a century gone by since her father passed away in 1968, but the book had followed Mrs Oakley 200 miles from her home county of Kent to Church Stretton, Shrops, where she now lives. “I recognised my father’s writing straight away as it was very tidy and he could write in very small letters,” said Mrs Oakley.
“It is an amazing coincidence for the book to have ended up in the charity shop I volunteer in.”
Mrs Oakley is now trying to trace the individual who donated the book in the hope of tracing its history since her father’s death.
The book contains black and white pictures of stamps and the prices at the time they were used.
In the catalogue, her father wrote: “1 in front of number means CA announcement of invalidation. Canada/coils QE.
“? [sic] curved but not a complete cylinder 425 17 hours of 25. 20 compress, one of plate on roll of paper make coil of 500, line paper is mound into register for easier impression causing out of alignment from which are registered. ? [sic] Phil from 1954.”
Mrs Oakley, who worked as a secretary before retiring, said: “What he has written is about an anomaly on a stamp. The writing must be 55, 60 years old.”