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(Page 3) Spring 2020 Newsetter

SOCIETY AND OTHER NEWS

Congratulations to Chris Tennant, who celebrates 50 years of NPS membership this year and to Bill Whitaker on reaching the 25-year mark.

Members displaying to other Societies:

Vic Holland presented a display on ‘The Postal History of Macclesfield’ at the GNCPS on 13 November and Mike Siverns showed ‘The North West Frontier’ at the Society of Postal Historians on 8 February. Brian Clayton gave one display entitled ‘The 1d Universal’ on 13 February at Radcliffe-on-Trent and another, ‘Commonwealth Antarctica’, at the GNCPS on 11 March. Richard Capon presented ‘The Postal History of Oundle’ at Radcliffe-on-Trent on 27 February. Two days later, Sandra Poole was at the RPSL showing a Cinderella Miscellany to the Cinderella Stamp Club. Chris Tennant was at the same venue a week later giving a display on Revenues, beginning with the letters B, C and D. Finally, on 11 March, Allen Wood was at Solihull PS with his display on Ethiopia.

Forthcoming Displays at our Society:

Due to Covid-19, all meetings are suspended until further notice. The AGM took place remotely and the minutes were sent out electronically to all those who had the means to receive them. Hard copies will be sent to all other members, along with the new membership cards, when normal service is resumed. In the meantime, our new President, Brian Clayton, has prepared a programme but, as he explains on the next page, both dates in May have been cancelled, and there is no meeting in June. At the moment, the programme up to the end of October is as follows:

3 Jul Antarctica, David Shipstone and Macclesfield P.H., Vic Holland

7 Aug Visit from Chesterfield PS

4 Sep Nobel Prize Winners and Periodic Table- D. Gabe and G. Taylor

11 Sep American Confederate States John Walker

18 Sep Visit to Alfreton PS

25 Sep Channel Islands Richard Fleming

16 Oct Labuan Jon Higgins

Remember, any of these meetings could be cancelled at the last minute we are living in uncertain times. Please keep an eye on the Notts Philatelic Society web site for any updates or ring the secretary (number in 2019-20 membership card) if you cannot be contacted electronically.

Thanks to our retiring President, Bill Whitaker.

Bill didn’t have an easy year in his job, what with taking on the post of Packet Manager; the traffic disruptions caused by lane closures during the repair works on Clifton Bridge which led to absences or late arrivals of some members; and then the coronavirus, which resulted in the cancellation of the last three meetings. However, we all enjoyed his interesting and varied programme and we thank him for this and all the hard work he put in for the benefit of members during his term of office.

Welcome to our new President (for the 4th time) Brian Clayton.

Here is the report he wrote for the AGM held remotely on 17 April 2020 and which also appeared in the minutes:

This short report has been written during the unprecedented lockdown period during the corona virus pandemic, which has profoundly affected us all. I hope members of the committee, and of the society as a whole, have escaped effects of Covid-19.

Owing to the necessary restrictions placed on group meetings and limited movement of people and transport, I have been in the upsetting position of needing to cancel meetings from my Programme even before it has been put into operation. So far, the two planned for May have been cancelled, but one has been rescheduled for an additional meeting date in September. There is no meeting scheduled for June this year. No decision has been made yet on meetings for July onwards, but inevitably there will be future adjustments which will be shown on the society website at regular intervals. I had worked hard to produce an attractive set of meetings and I intend to do all I can to retain as much of it as possible.

The possibility is that the first committee meeting of the season, which I had anticipated would be held in say July, may need to take place based on timed email exchanges or other media techniques. If necessary, we will have to wait until all imposed restrictions have been removed !

Stay safe and take the opportunity to put together lots of displays for the future.

DISPLAY REPORTS BY DOUGLAS HARVEY

Ladies’ Evening-7 February 2020

A Moment with Mickey- Maddie Tennant,

Maddie presented a fascinating historical account of the lifetime work of Walt Disney and, subsequently, Disney Studios. The story commenced with Mickey Mouse in 1928 as hand-drawn pictures, which were assembled into frames for animation. The more lengthy production followed, commencing with ‘Snow White’ in 1937. Combined animation and real life were next and, after Disney died, computer graphics produced the highly successful ‘Toy Story’. The talk was illustrated with beautiful philatelic sheets and stamps mostly originating from Commonwealth West Indies countries. It was significant that nearly every film was accompanied by a pictorial stamp issue.

Cinderella Miscellany- Sandra Poole

A wide variety of items was shown, commencing with a display of splendid Danish kiosk telegrams, together with telegraph stamps, local British and foreign issues, followed by revenue stamps, poster stamps, airmail labels, Christmas Charity seals and Boy Scout mail. The items illustrated the scope of Cinderella collecting, which has recently gained popularity amongst philatelists.

Members’ Evening: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral, 21 Feb 2020

Eleven short displays were contributed, which commenced with stamps showing animals from the South Atlantic Islands and birds from Scandinavia. Photographs of animals in Ethiopia and Antarctica and more stamp illustrations of animals in the Arctic and Belgian Congo followed. Thematic stamps also illustrated elephants and animals for the Chinese New Year. Australia featured with minerals and plants. Finally, revenue stamps and taxation documents relating to the subject provided an interesting contrast to the pictorial l displays. The entertainment value was enhanced with members recalling their personal experiences, with some documentation.

New Zealand: Andrew Dove, FRPSL, 6 March 2020

The first part of the display concerned New Zealand military history from 1843 to 1918. The civil uprisings between 1843 and 1872concerned land disputes between Maori and settlers due to the interpretation of the treaty of Waitangi. More postal documentation related to the Crimean War, but New Zealand was isolated until 1876, when a cable connection was made. The Boer War followed and New Zealand was the second largest contributor to the Empire forces. Shortly after the First World War started, New Zealand was asked to occupy Samoa, and overprinted stamps appeared. The Expeditionary Force secured the Suez Canal and in 1915 the disastrous invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli followed.

After the coffee break, the second part of the display featured modern New Zealand and included the efforts of New Zealand Post to popularise the country. Finally, the numerous entrepreneurial private postal activities formed a wide variety of interesting philatelic items, including some fascinating documentation. (Andrew Dove, at the end of the display, handed me a comprehensive report of his display. Any member wishing to have a scan of this, should contact me. Ed.)

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FREE- Brian Clayton has a Stanley Gibbons ‘Stamps of the World Catalogue‘ complete 5 volume set 2010, in ‘as new’ condition, offered FREE to the first person to collect the package 2 metres from his front door. A car will be needed to transport the package as it weighs 11 kg.

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Advance Notice- London 2020, as you all, know has been cancelled on account of Covid- 19. It is now due to take place on 19-26 February 2022 Autumn Stampex is currently taking place from 30 September to 3 October. Let’s hope that coronavirus will have died out by then.

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In a recent issue of the Waikato PS Newsletter we were introduced to the old word ‘timbrology’ meaning ‘philately’. ‘Timbromania’ (passion for stamps) and ‘timbrophily’ are two others!

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

ANDREW PEARSON

As I mentioned to Brian Clayton over the Christmas Social Evening, I have started a specialized GB First Day Cover collection. First Day Cover collectors don’t normally think of collecting different types of FDCs, such as Postal Stationery, booklet covers and ‘non-visible changes’ definitive covers etc.

In the Winter Newsletter, Alan Squires mentions an interesting cover and this has inspired me to put pen to paper. I have two covers- can you spot the difference apart from the addressee?

n fact, it is a 5½p small Postal Stationery envelope, size 0, issued on 17 March 1975, the same date of issue as the 5½p, one-centre-band stamp, which was the second class rate at the time.

One cover has the correct date and was hand stamped in Windsor, Berkshire; the other, if you spotted the difference, shows the incorrect date of 17 March 1974 and was stamped in Brighton, Sussex. What happened is the Post Office clerk made a mistake with the handstamp and applied the wrong date. I wonder how many such errors exist. I obtained it for just a couple of pounds from the stamp shop in town.

Just as Andrew was inspired by Alan Squires’s cover, I was inspired in the same way by Andrew’s article. I knew I had some Danish First Day Covers in my Magasin du Nord collection which weren’t entirely straightforward and I persuaded myself to investigate further. As a result, I have written a short article. (Ed.)

MAGASIN DU NORD FIRST DAY COVERS

SANDRA POOLE

These FDCs were issued by Magasin du Nord, probably the flagship department store of Copenhagen, although Illum might not agree! The first two show a faceless postman holding a letter in an impossible way; the artwork seems quite avant-garde for the rather stylised 1950s!

The covers below are identical, but the stamps and the dates on the postmarks are different. Someone would have presumably purchased the unused covers from the store’s philatelic department, attached their own stamps and sent them on their way- but on different days as shown by the postmarks. These are the plain, bridge type cancellations instead of the special FDI ones usually used on these illustrated covers.

In most cases, the illustration on the store’s FDCs matches the theme of the stamps attached. Of course, on all 4 covers the stamps are definitives, so the only connection presumably is the post, hence the postmen. The date, 25.6.1952, on the first postmark corresponds with the issue date of the King Frederik IX, light blue 25 ore stamp.

The postmark date 14.8.52 on the second cover corresponds with that of the wavy line, pale green 12 ore issue. It would be interesting to know when the illustrated cover was actually issued and how many issues these and other ‘one-size fits all’ covers were used for.

As an aside, it is also interesting to see that one of these two covers is addressed to Mr. Dr Lundh, the other to Mrs. Dr. Lundh, just under two and a half months apart, but at different addresses. Had they fallen out or just moved in the meantime? We will never know!

The covers seen below have a different illustration, showing a line of postmen sallying forth from the Magasin du Nord flagship store with handfuls of letters- or FDCs perhaps? The story is just the same, however. The stamps, from the wavy line and Frederik IX series, were issued with a surcharge- 5 on 6, 5 on 7 and 30 on 20- on 20.10.1955 and these correspond with the postmark. The single stamp on the right-hand cover is a different value from that on the other- 30 on 25- hence the different date: 23.2.1956 on the postmark, which likewise is the same as the issue date

The cover below left shows an illustration of Frederik V and is part of a series celebrating Denmark’s 1000 years as a kingdom; it was issued in 1955. In this case, however, it did not serve as a first day cover but was used commercially by Magasin du Nord and bears the company meter mark dated 16.11 1956.

t appears that the store also provided a first day cover service for Iceland. The cover on the right actually shows in this case an illustration that corresponds with the stamp. Both were issued on 29.9.1956 and celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Iceland’s Telegraph Service. It also bears a special first day of issue postmark!

A SOUVENIR COVER

DOUGLAS HARVEY

I found an unusual Charles and Diana Wedding Cover in a pile of Royal Mail First Day Covers. It seemed to have something wrong about it. Firstly, the cover artwork is really awful and secondly, the September postmark date is wrong for the issue of 22 July 1981.

The cover was a Unilever promotion- a venture into philately from the soap company- and the covers are by no means rare looking at Ebay. What is rare is one as an actual first day of issue cover, which is for sale at £40, compared with the usual price of £1. All covers are cancelled with a Port Sunlight handstamp and the cancellation dates vary from July to December 1981.

I am curious to know more. Did Unilever issue a voucher on the soap packet for a complimentary cover? Why are FDCs so scarce compared with the souvenir covers? Perhaps they underestimated the demand; after all, philately was popular at that time.

Snippet (SP)

Apparently, according to some research that I saw mentioned in a stamp magazine news cutting, 51% of the people visiting Autumn Stampex in 2018 spent under £1000. The corollary to that is that 49% spent more and I did find that rather surprising. But perhaps not when you consider that one person, at least, bought a rare stamp worth £30,000. I have also seen quite a few people open briefcases full of notes- I am not one of them, needless to say !

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

DAVID SHIPSTONE

I have had this postal stationery item stored away for years and it was only recently, when at last I got around to do some writing up, that I noticed the unissued franking. At first sight, it is just an ordinary up-rated postal stationery card. But 3 marks 5 pfennigs or 3.05 marks? This was never a real German postal rate.

The basic 3-mark card was issued in 1922, before Germany’s problems with hyperinflation really got under way. In October of that year, it would have paid the rate for a distant postcard within Germany. By 30 November 1923, that rate had risen to 40 thousand million marks and this card was well and truly obsolete. On 1 December 1923, a new unit of currency, the Rentenmark was introduced, equivalent to 1 million millions of the old paper marks and, somewhat miraculously, the period of hyperinflation was brought to an abrupt end. In July 1934, when my card was posted in Mulhausen, the distant rate for a postcard was 5pf in the new currency and it was the 5pf stamp alone that paid the postage to Berlin. The old postal stationery card simply served in place of an ordinary plain postcard: an example of thrift.

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Summer Newsletter Please send or e-mail photos, comments, articles or other philatelic items before the end of July to the editor: sandy.poole @ntlworld.com .

SCRATCH STAMPS

SANDRA POOLE

It’s quite a time since I last featured stamp gimmicks in our Newsletter, but I recently received the current Waikato PS Newsletter, sent to me in a beautifully stamped and postmarked envelope- Royal Mail take note!

John Waller, the editor, informed me that the set was issued in 1996. It celebrates the Centenary of Cinema in New Zealand and, as you can see, on each stamp there is a scratch area, which gives you the chance of winning a prize. John told me that a lot of the prizes, some quite good, were not claimed as collectors did not want to scratch them! I looked the set up in the SG catalogue and, amazingly, the stamps were shown without the scratch area and without any mention of it.

The actor featured on the second cover is Calvin Tuteao, who is fairly well known in New Zealand. John and his wife were lucky to meet him and have the cover signed by him.

THE LETTERBOXES OF ASCENSION ISLAND

ALAN SQUIRES

The cover of the South Atlantic Chronicle for August 2019 showed examples of official cachets used on covers from St. Helena and Ascension. This reminded me that I had something similar somewhere in my collection

I had won a lot in an auction several years back which included a personal folder made by Judith Faulkner during a visit to Ascension in 2000. Among the covers, luggage labels, telephone cards and other ephemera, she had collected the handstamps from all eighteen letterboxes on the Island.

According to her notes, the idea of letterboxes developed in the 17th century when outward bound ships would leave messages on an island for the next ship to take home. This idea apparently appealed to walkers on Ascension and in 1913 a green tin box was placed at the appropriately named ‘Letterbox’ so that notes left there could be put into the general post by the next person to visit the spot.

The modern series of boxes dates from 1979 when Sean Newberry was walking with friends discussing a letter that had been left for posting by whoever found it. It raised the question of how the person leaving the letter could prove they had actually left it at Letterbox.

Newberry decided to place two similar boxes each with a handstamp so that the sender could prove they had been to the letterbox in question. The first of the modern boxes was placed on “Sisters Peak” on 12 September 1979 and the second at “Letterbox” on 15 September 1979.

Below is a list of the eighteen letterboxes and their opening dates:

Judith managed to get examples of each of these handstamps on specially produced envelopes which marked her visit to Ascension.

I wonder if any of our members have seen the actual letterboxes on their visits or stays on the Island.

ANOTHER LABEL

SANDRA POOLE

I had never seen this label before and couldn’t believe my luck when I received this flier, along with two others without this addition. It looked like mine was at the top of a batch of 569. Obviously, this one was not meant to be delivered- just read and discarded once the job was done.I also wonder if they are still in existence.

SLOGANS

SANDRA POOLE

Royal Mail has produced an eclectic choice of slogans this quarter. The one below marks World Maths Day on 4 March. Albert Einstein’s full quote was: ‘Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.’ For an explanation, go to:www.perimeterinstitute.ca/poetry-logical-ideas

The top slogan is celebrating Easter 2019. The choice of the Christmas stamp was purely coincidental but adds a nice touch of humour to it!

A timely reminder for Pancake Day when there was still flour on the shelves!

Double printing- two for the price of one for Holocaust Memorial Day:

This was one of at least 2 different slogans for World Cancer Day:

I think we all know this slogan off by heart now!

LETTERBOX MISCELLANY

SANDRA POOLE

DISCLAIMER: While every care is taken during the production of the reports, neither the editor or Society Officers can accept any liability for views or unintentional publication errors that may occur.

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