(Page 18) Summer 2011 Newsletter

PRISON MAIL?

Sandra Poole

DRUGS AND STAMPS

Sandra Poole

I expect a lot of you heard about drugs being smuggled into an American prison under the stamps affixed to mail sent to prisoners. They were discovered, apparently, due to the bumpy appearance of the stamps! In America, drug users are supposed, by law, to affix a narcotics revenue stamp on to their illegal substances, with a fine likely in the case of non-compliance. Crazy, but true. At least, collectors are buying these stamps! I tried to buy a narcotics stamp on Ebay, but did not succeed because, in this case, sales were restricted to the USA. A dealer acquaintance tried to get hold of some, but found that he was apparently not allowed to import them.

I saw a perfect example in an American publication over a year ago and had hoped to reproduce the stamp and part of the article in our newsletter. However, it appeared from their website that they wanted nearly £300 for me to do so and when I emailed them asking them to waive this fee, they refused..

The item below, however, is all above board. It is an annual licence issued to a medical practitioner for dispensing certain medicinal drugs to his patients.

COVER STORY

Brian Clayton

The following are just three intriguing ‘errors’ to be found in Antarctic philately. These examples illustrate the importance of studying illustrated covers carefully for errors and unusual markings whatever the source and age and to follow up the story behind them.

This cover took me by surprise as the photograph on the imprint appears to be that of Sir Edmund Hillary. However, he was certainly not on the United States Victoria Land Traverse although two other New Zealanders were! On further investigation it seems that the cover was produced by a NZ dealer who did not know his postal history. The dealer thought the USVLT expedition was part of the Fuchs/Hillary Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1958. He then got even more mixed up with the US Operation Deep Freeze (which became an annual event) and produced a similar cover with a photograph on it of Admiral Dufek, its then leader.

The second cover has an embossed picture of penguins set in an Antarctic landscape and was produced by the well-known Wesley Cover Service (WCS). The caption reads ANTARCTICA ‘THE HOME OF THE KING PENGUIN’. This is WRONG on two counts. The King Penguin has no home on Antarctica (the continental land mass) but lives and breeds on the sub-Antarctic islands and does so in very large numbers.on South Georgia, for example. It is the Emperor Penguin that has its home on Antarctica. But then, the picture of the penguin shown is NOT the Emperor but the Adélie penguin which lives on coastal areas of Antarctica.

During the 1940s and 50s there was an individual in Australia who apparently had a liking for cachets on covers and if absent when received would remedy the situation himself. These can be easily recognized, being applied in a large type face with lower and upper case letters and various errors such as I for l in the word Australian, as shown on cover. Ornaments were sometimes applied as can be seen here. Also Antarctic was misspelt by omission of the first “c” and one can see the rather crude correction towards the end of the word. Although privately applied, there have been some instances where the cachet has given valuable historic information.

CATALOGUING MY COLLECTION

Alan Squires

During recent visits to stamp fairs I have found, much to my chagrin, that my records of what stamps I have already collected are never accurate or up to date. On three occasions I have returned only to find my latest acquisition is sitting quietly in the stock book back at home. Once I spent a third of my budget on stamps I already had.

This was not in an attempt to improve the quality of an existing item or set. It was bad book keeping. I started to wonder how other stamp collectors, many of whom have far greater collections than mine, avoid this problem.

I was told by one person that he only buys items on his current wish list. This is made up just before he visits a stamp fair or dealer and he only buys what is on the list. He admitted he had returned from fairs empty handed on occasions. This shows tremendous strength of character.

This seemed a good idea to me and one I tried out. It would have worked, except I could not come away empty handed when the dealers did not have what I wanted. Using a printed version of my catalogue I purchased a few stamps, only to find the catalogue was incorrect.

Another collector I noticed was crossing his acquisitions off from his copy of Michel. There were lines through various entries, circles round others, question marks and highlighter marks. A good idea maybe, but one I find goes against the grain as I have a thing about books. I like to keep them as pristine as possible. So the idea of defacing a book was out of the question for me.

I was told I could instead photocopy parts of the catalogue and take the photocopies with me. The time and money spent on this was too much for me. But I was still duplicating stamps by accident. The lists I produced from my records were now running to 20 odd A4 pages. I needed something easy and foolproof.

As I keep all my records on a computer and manage to keep them up to date by entering information as I place stamps into their respective stock books, I knew there had to be an answer in technology. As a retired Craft, Design and Technology teacher it was only natural that I looked to IT for help. My daughter suggested I could use my mobile phone to access my PC. I thanked her for this suggestion!

This was a definite non-starter as mobile phones and I just do not see eye to eye. Yes I can send and receive text messages, but that’s as far as I go. Gizmos like iPad and iPod and other devices of this ilk seem to come from another galaxy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really a Luddite. But it was becoming obvious that to save wasting money buying duplicates I was going to have to do something radical. Well radical for me.

The answer came when said daughter suggested buying a notebook. Brilliant I thought! She expects me to copy everything out by hand in a little book. Then I was shown a ‘Notebook’, a smaller version of a laptop computer. With a 10” screen and a battery purporting to last up to 12 hours with massive memory and able to be loaded with office applications this seemed ideal. Costly, but ideal.

I spent some time researching these latest novelties before I jumped in at the deep end and purchased one. In fact I spent that long researching they were no longer novelties when I bought mine. Does it work? Has it stopped me from spending money on stamps I already have?

So far, yes. It is easy to carry around, being light in weight. It is small enough to fit on my knee when looking at dealers stock and quick to inspect my master catalogue to check my latest find. I use it solely for my stamp collecting activities and, so far it has proved to be foolproof. But I am aware that someone once said ‘never underestimate a fool when you produce a foolproof system’. Only time will tell.

ANOTHER STAMP GIMMICK

Sandra Poole

This stamp, dated 2010 in the bottom right hand corner, was issued on 17 February 2011 to celebrate His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s birthday. He is shown with what is probably a rice plant, on which has been stuck an actual grain! Not very easy to mount in a stamp album without producing a hole in the next sheet!

More interesting is the postmark, which shows 19.02.54. This seemed a bit strange until my live-in researcher guessed that Thailand used a different calendar from us and brought up the relevant information from the internet.

The Thai Solar Calendar is the official calendar in Thailand, although the Thai Lunar calendar is still sometimes used in business and banking. Years are now counted in the Buddhist Era, which predates the Christian era by 543 years. Months and days of the week still correspond to those used in the western Gregorian Calendar. So subtract 543 years from the above postmark-19.02.(25)54 and you get 19.02.(20)11.

Last year, China produced the first ceramic stamps- this is really getting a bit silly. Each hand-made stamp is approximately 0.33mm thick and 10,000 sets were produced to promote the China International Ceramic fair. They are valid for postage, but I don’t know whether they are ready gummed.

A CAUTIONARY TALE

Derek Poole

I discovered the following advice in a magazine agony aunt’s problem page, which made me realise I was not alone.

Most of us collected stamps in our youth – an album from the local newsagents with GB stamps in it, even perhaps a few approvals from Stanley Gibbons, providing an innocent interest in childhood which we grew out of. So finding out as you contemplate hitching your wagon to an appealing partner for your venture into adulthood that she or hecollects stamps seems of little consequence.

Beware – such a simple statement can hide an overwhelming obsessive activity, which will alter your life for ever. It is important therefore to look out for the warning signs which will help you gauge the level of danger before committing yourself:

• Find a way of looking at photos of your childhood. Pictures with rows of badges on a school blazer, piles of pebbles collected on a beach, a snap triumphantly holding a bus ticket taken on the day they were phased out, beer mats stuck on walls, are all indications of collecting mania.

• Non-chalantly drop out that you have a penny black stamp. If you are told it’s not in fact all that valuable, or are quizzed on the ‘plate’ or whether its ‘on cover’, beware.

• The use of the word philately is used instead of stamp collecting.

• Membership of some dubious club in an upstairs room requiring a number to be punched in for access, and where individuals scurry in carrying bulging plastic bags.

• If suggestions are made for holiday destinations check whether there just happens to be a postal museum there.

• When letters arrive, do the stamps – or even envelopes mysteriously disappear before you get to open them.

• A suggestion you will need quite a big house if you eventually stay together.

If, like many, you are too starry-eyed to at the time and ignore this advice, then you will probably attempt to make a stand for sanity at some stage. It will probably be when the spare bedroom has already become out of bounds and piles of stamps are gradually creeping over the dining table. You will of course fail dismally. The illness of philately has long been recognised – even the worst of all, continual exposure to situations where you feign interest in the number of serrations on a stamp or the flaw on the third letter of Bypost can lead to contagion. If you think this is happening to you then take up Bridge. You will become equally obsessive, and you can launch into discussions on overcalling and ruffing, and fight back!

Good luck

OBITUARY: PETER GOODWIN: 1930-2011

Sadly, Peter Goodwin died on 30 July, having suffered a massive heart attack whilst recovering from an apparently successful knee operation. Peter was a member of the Notts Philatelic Society for a short time in the early !970s and of the GNCS PS., before emigrating to New Zealand, where he joined the North Shore and Waikato Philatelic Societies He was also a member of the Egypt and Sudan Study Circles and an active Freemason. He had many collecting interests, including Nottingham Postal History, Egypt, Sudan and Danish Local Posts and Christmas Seals He always kept in touch with our Society and last year attended our Competition Evening, contributing a one frame display on Palestine. He was a bookbinder by trade until he recently retired and a prison officer in the UK.

(Thanks to Steve Speak who contributed additional information for the above)

Peter Goodwin was also a regular contributor to Becky Martz’s banana label collection, which may be viewed in its entirety on her website. At the last count, she was up to 10,651 labels.

I also happened to notice that on 22nd April, on Ebay, there was an unrelated collection from Ecuador of over 2,500 different banana stickers for sale at £120.67 in the auction or £181.02 on ‘Buy it Now’. (That means that there is at least one other collector in the world!) It had no takers at the time, but there were still several days to go. I wonder whether it actually sold!

MISCELLANY

A Dying Hobby? It is estimated that in China there are now eighteen million stamp collectors and rumour has it that they are buying an awful lot of stamps. The market is also booming in India, apparently.

Meanwhile, the Twopenny Blue Mauritius has recently sold for just over one million pounds. It is said that the owner bought it in 1972 for £29,000. In the SG 2005 catalogue, it was valued at £555,000.

Last year, according to the BBC, Royal Mail delivered 1.7 billion pieces of junk mail to British homes. I am sure it all came to mine.

Allen Wood: In the last newsletter, I published the oration that Bryan Button had written for the celebration of Allen Wood’s 50 years continuous membership of the Society. Bryan has since then managed to extract from Allen the list of the other societies to which he belonged and this is as follows: British Rail Stamp Club, Ethiopian Collectors Club, Ethiopian Philatelic Society of America, France & Colonies P.S., Italian & Colonies Study Circle, London & Provincial Stamp Club, National Philatelic Society, Oriental Philatelic Association of London, West Africa Study Circle and the Royal Philatelic Society London of which he is a fellow. With all those subs, how can he afford the stamps!

Success at the ABPS Philatelic Exhibition at Sheffield- Congratulations to Adrian Ritoridis who was awarded Vermeil (78 points) for his one frame exhibit entitled ‘The Nazi Rocket Mail:Gerhard Zucker and the 5th German Rocket Flight.’ Adrian also received a silver-bronze in the Literature class for an article that was published in the Hellenic Philatelic Society Journal.

Congratulations also to Wendy Orr who won the Postal History Class at the Phoenix Trophy Competition with 82 points (Silver-gilt). She was awarded the silver standard for her thematic entry on Dragons and Doug Harvey received silver-bronze for ‘The Stamps of Jennifer Toombs, FRSA’. These were our only competing Society representatives, but other members went along to offer support. It is always a good evening with some fine displays. The overall winner was Gordon Hardy with a total of 94 points (gold) for his entry in the traditional class: ‘The Small 1d Inland Revenue 1866-82- its Evolution and Usage.’

A belated happy birthday to Derrick Avery, who celebrated his 95th birthday on 16 April. Unfortunately, it just missed the Spring Newsletter, which had to be produced early to be in time for the AGM.

Competition Evening. There were 8 entries in our annual competition. The Postal History class was won by Doug Stubbings (Early Canadian Airmails), the Thematic by Adrian Ritoridis (Europe Marches against Bolshevism) and the Traditional by Brian Clayton. Our Huston representatives are Jacqui Benham (National Trust) and Doug Stubbings (Spitfires.)

The following should appeal to all the jigsaw puzzlers in the Society: A little silver-haired lady calls her neighbour and says, “Please come and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle and I can’t figure out how to get started.” Her neighbour asks, “What is it supposed to be when it’s finished?” The little silver-haired lady replies, “According to the picture on the box, it’s a rooster.” The neighbour decides to go over and help with the puzzle. She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table. He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says, “First of all, no matter what we do, we’re not going to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a rooster.” He takes her hand and says, “Secondly, I want you to relax. Let’s have a nice cup of tea and then,” he said, with a deep sigh…… “let’s put all the cornflakes back in the box.”

DISCLAIMER: While every care is taken during the production of this newsletter, neither the editor nor the Society officers can accept any liability for views,opinions or unintentional publication errors that may occur.

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