Newsletter : November 2000
News of members
Welcome to new member Graham Hardee. Also it was good to see Peter Butcher back after his recent illness.
Recent meetings
The new season started on 6 September at the usual Civic Centre venue with "new acquisitions". This gave members a chance to show a range of material, including some web auction "bargains".
The second meeting in September resulted in a lively discussion on "What is social philately?" based on the excellent leaflet produced by the British Philatelic Trust for The Stamp Show 2000.
This was followed at the usual two-week interval by an evening of "computers and philately". While this concentrated on what computers can do to help writing up collections, we had a demonstration of and discussion about use of the Internet for getting and sharing information and for buying and selling material. One interesting development is the return of the illustrated cover using computers to generate some quite beautiful designs, as illustrated by Bernie Riff.
The ACE web site ( artcoverexchange.homepage.com ) is a good place to start.
The first visitors of the season were the members of the Cardiff club. On display were: Isle of Man, Ceylon, Tristan da Cunha, Guatemala, Cape of Good Hope and a display on the theme of Christianity.
Due to Ron Hardacre being ill, Martyn Britton stepped in at the last minute to give a display on Fiji to share the evening on 1 November with Bernie Riff, who showed some recent unusual Japanese material. Among the Japan items were the millennium miniature sheets on cover and a lovely selection of first day covers with dual postmarks: one with the western calendar and the other with the Japanese dates (where the year relates to the succession of the Emperor).
We also made a trip to Bridgend in September, where Gwen illustrated the life and paintings of Albrecht Durer, John Perry displayed Faroes and Monmouthshire and Alistair MacKinnon gave a slide-show of stamps and photos from his recent holiday in Southern Africa.
South Wales Federation news
The club had a table at the Federation autumn fair in Port Talbot on 30 September 2000 and quite a few members made the long trip west for the day. This stamp fair is a mixture of club and dealer tables. Most of the material available at the Newport club table was on sale for the Macmillan Cancer Relief charity, to which £87 was sent a few days later.
Two Newport members also went to the Federation annual general meeting at the end of October. Neil Prior suggested possible dates for a judging seminar: 10 or 24 March 2001.
The Pembrokeshire Roadshow, which tours schools in the area, is having continued success in introducing the hobby to juniors.
The date for the next autumn fair is 29 September 2001 (in Barry). The next federation convention date has previously been announced as 5 May 2001 (in Port Talbot, as usual).
On a sad note, we have to report the deaths of Gillian Hopkins of Barry and Bill Neal of Ammanford.
ABPS
The ABPS (Association of British Philatelic Societies) now has a web site, which it shares with the National Philatelic Society and the British Philatelic Trust. This site has links to web sites for clubs: Newport was one of the first clubs to be linked in.
The address is: www.ukphilately.org.uk
Stamp Show 2000
The London International Stamp Show was at Earls Court from 22 to 28 May 2000. This now seems like history. Several members went on one or more of the days. I could get there only on the Saturday and that really was not enough time to see everything. Highlights were obviously gems from the Queen's collection and from the Post Office archives, which are seen only rarely.
A philatelic first was the personalised "Smilers" stamp sheets where labels were printed with your photograph taking while you waited. This was an excellent souvenir that literally produced unique additions to a stamp collection. The Royal Mail is advertising a similar idea for Christmas mail this year.
A very attractive item that was actually difficult to track down was a reprint of the Penny Black in a souvenir folder. Although the stamp was being reprinted during the show, this was for demonstration purposes and the actual reprints were produced (on the same machine) in advance. Nevertheless it was a good idea and I managed to get my copy signed by the printer who was running the demonstrations (M Balakjian).
Social Philately
When we discussed the topic "what is social philately?" we thought that there would be quite a lot of material on the subject but only had the (excellent) BPT colour brochure.
It is probably true to say that the title "Social Philately" originated in Australia in the 1980s. It is worth noting that even "Revenue Stamps" was not recognised as a class for international exhibitions until 1986, even though it was an important collecting area in Victorian times. Still it's best not to hurry things! From being a competitive class in Australia since the 1980s, it was introduced as an experimental class in the International Exhibition in Melbourne in 1999. Both the Australian Philatelic Federation (APF) and the Australian Philatelic Society (APS) have been useful contacts, and we would like to thank Ross Wood and John Lancaster for their help in sending rules and a copy of the Australian Journal of Philately for September 1999.
APF web site: www.apf.org.au
Well, what is social philately? In the words of the BPT brochure, it is "telling a historical story through stamps and other material or to illustrate the relevance or impact of the postal system within society".
As a competitive entry, social philately makes its debut in the UK at the Glasgow 2000 exhibition on 17-19 November 2000.
Glasgow 2000 web site: home.freeuk.net/johnmorgan/glas2000.htm
Other interesting web sites
Ebay (auctions): pages.ebay.com
Stephen Reeves (stamps fairs): homepages.which.net/~stephen.reeves
Joe Luft (comprehensive list of philatelic sites): www.execpc.com/~joeluft
High Wycombe Stamp Club: www.pherber.com/hwps.html
Lars Nyberg (tribute to Czeslaw Slania): home.swipnet.se/lars_nyberg/index_eng.html
Jeff's stamp page (for the Faroe Islands):www.faroestampsite.com/index.html
John Perry, Honorary Secretary
Telephone: 01633 881068
Email: john@perry60.freeserve.co.uk
Web site: www.perry60.freeserve.co.uk