(Page 44) Winter 2018 Newsetter
LEEWARD ISLANDS POSTAL STATIONERY COLLECTION OF THE LATE KEN BENHAM
IAN JAKES
My experience is that most postmark collectors also collect postal stationery. The late Ken Benham followed this tradition. I am not reporting on plain stationery and postage stamps purchased separately, but on colonial pre-printed stationery which was impressed in the designs of the then current postage stamps being, in the Leeward Islands, key plate designs inscribed ‘POSTAGE/POSTAGE’. Postal administrations were required to become members of the General Postal Union (UPU) to provide postcards at the overseas rate to other member countries. The Leeward Islands joined the UPU on 1 July 1879. The first Postal Stationery was therefore postcards. Postal administrations realised the commercial advantages in printing stamped stationery at a small surcharge to compete with obtaining plain stationery and postage stamps in two separate purchases. The Leeward Islands Federal issue postage stationery was expected to comprise not only postcards but also reply cards, postage envelopes. news wrappers and registered envelopes.
As with all of Ken’s Leeward Islands collection, he referred to authorities in use by philatelists in the 1960s/1970s. Ken made every effort to collect one of each Leeward Islands item, either mint or used. He proudly stated that some of his items had not been previously recorded. I checked ‘The Leeward Islands Notes for Philatelists- Second Edition’ by MN Oliver published in 2011, when I discovered that all of Ken’s postal stationery items were now recorded. Shock! Horror! Two postal stationery items were missing from Ken’s collection. There appeared to be the April 1934 one penny Red and three-halfpenny Brown Postage Envelopes, both measuring 150 x 90mm. Both had black interiors. This was not surprising because the 1970s philatelic literature did not mention the existence of the April 1934 Postage Envelopes.
According to Oliver (page 120), there is only one known example of the 1d Red and three of the three-halfpenny Postage Envelope which measures 133 x 108mm. Oliver states that this only has a blue interior, detail not mentioned in earlier philatelic literature. Ken’s collection included a 1928 three-halfpenny Brown Postage Envelope showing the correct 1928 measurements. There is an irksome comment on this page of Ken’s collection which reads ‘Higgins and Gage record the 1d Red as being of the same size as the other Geo V period. But the narrower format is the only size I have seen.’ You have guessed right; Fig. 1 shows the front and fig. 2 the black interior of the April 1934 Postage envelope, two of which now exist! Ken never had a 1928 1d Red or a 1934 three-halfpenny Brown Postage Envelope in his collection.
THE POST OFFICE MUSEUM. PART 1: COLLECTING THE MAIL
BRIAN CLAYTON AND ALAN SQUIRES
On 6th December 2017 we took our seats on a day trip with Sharpe’s of Nottingham. We were off to the Post Office Museum in Phoenix Place, London. The coach was full, and the journey down was comfortable. This is an account of some of the exhibits that can be seen at the Post Office Museum. The Museum is divided into two parts. One shows the history of the Post Office through a series of displays and the other is the underground rail system, which was used to move mail across London avoiding the road traffic.
Various methods have been used to collect mail. Figure 1 shows a Victorian letterbox, one of a number hanging from the wall outside the Museum main entrance. Figure 2 shows some of this display, which stretches across the courtyard. There were examples from the reign of Queen Victoria and the reigns of both Georges. These can still be seen in some parts of the country, especially small villages where there may not be enough room on the pavement for a large letter box.
Letterboxes have not always been red, nor have they always been round. Figure 3 shows one of the first designs in its original green colour and was hexagonal in shape. And what better colour than blue for Air Mail letters, about to be sent to their destination through the blue sky, see figure 4. The first recorded UK letterbox being erected was in Botchergate, Carlisle in 1853 and was apparently red.
Some letterboxes served a dual purpose and dispensed stamps if the correct coinage was pushed into the slot-machine in the back of the letterbox. Having purchased your stamps at the letterbox and affixed one to your envelope you could post it at the front of the letterbox. Again, these boxes were not round, but oval. As can be seen from the photographs, the boxes on display, are all in pristine condition and all have had their apertures blocked to stop visitors from being tempted to post letters in the displays. Part 2 will deal with moving the mail through the ages.
ANOTHER MIXED CURRENCY ISSUE FROM CANADA
DOUGLAS HARVEY
To celebrate Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light, on 21 September 2017, Canada Post issued a miniature sheet with both Canada and India stamps. The Canadian stamp has a face value of $2.50 and the Indian stamp has 25.00 new rupees (INR). Interestingly, the current rate of postage for a minimum letter from Canada to India is $2.63, so the stamp needs 13 cents added to be of use. Similarly, the Indian stamp could be used to send a minimum letter to Canada. There are three rates available: air mail is 27 INR, surface air lift mail is 26 INR and surface mail is 20 INR (all for a 10 day maximum delivery time). So, again, a 25 INR stamp is not the required postage. It only covers the surface mail and it is interesting to speculate that there is probably no 10 day service available from Indian shipping. I am also intrigued to know the difference between air mail and surface air lift mail.
REMINISCING THE GOOD OLD DAYS
ALAN SQUIRES
Sometime before Christmas my burglar alarm system was having its annual service. The technician asked who had installed the system and I replied it was British Telecom way back in the late 80s. He was amazed that the system was not a British Telecom system having worked for them himself. He said that a number of BT engineers had offered a cheaper installation at weekends by using parts that were left on their vans, but this was the first time he had come across a BT installation of a system the company had not made itself.
He went on to tell me that when British Telecom had introduced their new telephone box, the KX100, in the late 1980s, a lot of them were vandalised. This was not the usual senseless ‘Oh, it’s made of glass, so we can smash it,’ vandalism. Enterprising people realised that the glass panels could be repurposed and were, therefore, stealing them and installing them as shower cubicles in their bathrooms.
The police eventually made several arrests and recovered some of the showers, sorry telephone boxes. I related this tale to friend who had spent some time working for Jaguar in Coventry and had access to the Longbridge plant at British Leyland. He remarked that many of the front doors on the surrounding housing estates were the same colours as various models of BL cars. Apparently, particular favourites were Flamenco Red, Marina Green and Sandglow. We spent a few minutes theorising on how this was possible, with the obvious answer being that the paint had come from the BL plant.
I’m still bemused as to how I have a British Telecom installed burglar alarm system that did not come from BT!
A NOVEL POSTCARD
SANDRA POOLE
The postcard below shows a Danish messenger delivering a telegram, which he is holding up in the air. I bought it on the internet. It was not until I received it, that I saw that it was not just a picture of a telegram, but an actual, mini-sized version with a handwritten message, folded, sealed and glued to the postcard. It was sent in 1904.
OH GOOD, ANOTHER UPDATE FROM MICROSOFT !
ALAN SQUIRES
I have always been behind the times (not the newspaper). I do not follow trends or fashions. For example, some years ago, I needed a new suit for work. I had an outlet, which I used for my ‘business’ suits, but my wife told me to visit a newly opened men’s outfitter in the Victoria Centre. As soon as I walked in I knew I was out of place. The young, enthusiastic sales lad was there in a flash.
‘Can I help you, sir? Is there something particular you require?’ he asked. ‘I want a new business suit, grey pin stripe, double breasted.’ I replied. ‘Grey pin stripe double breasted are no longer in fashion, sir’ he said, almost politely.
‘Do I look as if I’ve ever been in fashion?’ I asked as I walked out. That was years ago, but the philosophy still exists. So Why do I always fall for the latest updates which Microsoft and other companies send me? A recent update, now automatically installed, has thrown me into turmoil. The first evidence was that it took 40 minutes to open my laptop while updates were in progress.
Then all my desktop had been changed. Icons were not in their usual place. It took a couple of days to get used to things and find where everything had been hidden. Eventually, I was back in charge of my laptop.
I was working on new material for an Ascension Island display. This involves some research before the item can be written up. My usual practice is to copy a piece, or pieces, from the internet and paste them below where I am writing my description so that I can refer to it quickly without changing screens. Once I have finished I obviously delete the research and continue. I had done this when I noticed that half my work had a feint blue background. It looked as if it had been highlighted. I realised that the piece of work I had copied and pasted had also had this blue background. A quick check by repasting the original piece proved I was correct.
I highlighted the entire article and tried several ways to remove the blue background. White text highlight, no fill background shading. Nothing seemed to work. Eventually, I experimented by selecting one word at a time and clicking on Normal Style. I had to go through each word using this method; even Format Painter proved incapable of removing the blue haze.
At last, I had completed removing the haze, or so I thought. The short paragraph I had been working with now had the blue haze removed for each word, but not the spaces between them! Furthermore, the paragraph above now had the blue haze. This had been written before the copy and paste.
Feeling very frustrated I printed out the page and sure enough there was the blue haze. Complete throughout the first paragraph and between each word on the second. I tried erasing and re-writing without any luck. My Normal Document Template now put a blue haze behind every word I typed. I managed to get a clean write-up in the end, but I had to redefine my document template to stop this blue haze appearing on all further work. This required a phone call to an IT friend who talked me through it.
There is good news. I sent my problem to the experts at Microsoft’s Technical Service Department. I received an e-mail from them within the hour thanking me for getting in touch and promising (and I quote), ‘We will deal with your enquiry as soon as possible. This can take 14 to 28 days, or longer, depending on the volume of traffic we are dealing with.’ Fortunately, the display is not until April. And, no, I won’t be holding my breath.
GROW YOUR OWN
JOHN WALLER
(Waikato P S Newsletter)
This set of six stamps (2x$1, $2.20, $2.30, $2.70, $3.30 - total face value of $12.50) was issued on the 4th October 2017 and has some rather unique features. There are two stamp types, those with seeds affixed and those with no seeds affixed. The stamps without seeds come in sheets of 10 while the stamps with seeds are only available in miniature sheet format - but there is also a miniature sheet with no seeds for overseas collectors. New Zealand Post won’t sell the stamps with seeds to overseas buyers for biosecurity reasons, only to kiwis - but I bet there will be strong collector demand for both types of miniature sheet and such items will get sent overseas by collector friends with most likely reaching their destination. But there is another aspect to the tale. Note that there is no selvedge at the bottom of the unseeded sheet so the five stamps all contain (different) information or symbols in them that are normally located in the selvedge, while those in the top row have none. So, if you want to collect all the different types of stamps then there are six of them - and if you collect used stamps that will be a challenge.
Thanks to John for permission to use his article, which appeared in the last edition of the Waikato Philatelic Society, New Zealand. He had sent me a copy of the newsletter with the $3.30 lettuce stamp attached to the envelope, so this sets it in context.
Added in August 2018:. After the article had appeared in the Waikato NL, John wrote: ‘Dave Butcher of the Kiwi Stamp Circuit pointed out to me that there are serrations at the bottom of each stamp where the coloured point stops, so the bottom bit, whether it is blank or has printing and other information, can be removed leaving a nice pointy stamp.
POSTAL SLOGANS
SANDRA POOLE
We have had postal slogans for as long as I can remember; marking events, urging us to buy War Bonds and encouraging us to take up, for instance, a ‘distinguished career in nursing’ (1948). More exciting for us as children at least, were those advertising seaside resorts or different kinds of chocolate. Now brand advertising is defunct, but we still have slogans marking events such as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Tim Peake’s trip into space and celebrating anniversaries. Several recently have been devoted, perhaps with didactic intent, to those in the field of literature: the Man Booker Prize-winner (see last NL), the 2017 Nobel Prize-winner, Jane Austen, John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost and William Shakespeare’s quatercentenary. We have also had Dog Awareness and Postal Stationery weeks, World Letter-Writing Day and weird exhortations to ‘Stay safe online’ and ‘Stay well this winter’. The list is endless, but here are a few examples:
Yet another literature slogan has appeared announcing the winner, Ocean Vuong, of the TS Eliot prize for the best new poetry collection. The slogan was dated the same day, 16 January, as the result appeared in the press.
MISCELLANY
Happy New Year to you all- Subs (£10) are now due! At least, despite inflation, they have not gone up.
Welcome to new member Gary Mac Shane.
Members displaying to other societies: Douglas Harvey presented a display on the Channel Islands to members of the Radcliffe-on-Trent PS on 26 October 2017. Mick and Barbara Inger were at Barnsley on 8 November with displays entitled ‘The Zeppelin Story’ and ‘Around the World’ respectively.
Society Competition, 17 November 2017: This was well attended and a higher than usual number of exhibits were entered: 2 in the Postal History Class, 2 in the Open and 3 in Traditional. There were no entries in the Thematic class. A high standard was shown in the Postal History class, with Alan Squires (The Early Cachets of Tristan da Cunha) being declared the winner. Sandra Poole took first place in the Open Class (Magasin du Nord) and Dennis Boot (De La Rue) was first in the Traditional category Oswaldo Ponce (Ecuador) was awarded the Novice Cup in the same class. Allen Wood was the main judge, with Chris Tennant and Brian Clayton as assistants. As the exhibits had generated so much interest, there was no time for a critique, Allen asked me to stress the importance of the introductory sheet in the Newsletter. In other competitions, (including Phoenix, MPF and ABPS), this has to be sent to the judges beforehand. They may have a lot of exhibits to judge and very little time in which to do it. Also, no judge can be expected to have knowledge of all collecting areas. This is why the introductory sheet is vital to ‘set the scene’ as it were. From the Spring Stampex rules, which can be viewed on the ABPS web site by clicking on ‘Stampex’: “The object of the introductory page is to state the aim of the exhibit and set out a plan showing how the exhibit will be structured. It should not simply be a contents list”. I would recommend that anyone wishing to compete should look at exhibits at the big stamp fairs and exhibitions to see what works.
Egg Cup Competition 15 December 2017: Twelve members took part in this year’s competition and the outright winner was Douglas Harvey who, in sombre tones and with great dramatic effect, introduced his tale as one of horror, murder, skulduggery and fraud- to see his winning entry, continue reading- if you dare!
Warning- fake RM ‘While you were out’ cards have been put through some people’s letterbox. They look identical to the original apart from missing the RM logo, top left. If you ring the number as told, you will be charged £45. The warning came out last August, but may still be valid.
DISPLAY REPORTS
Visit from Leicester PS on 3 November 2017
Four members of Leicester PS presented displays. Michael Berry opened with mail and views from Walvis Bay, a small town in Namibia (formerly South West Africa.) The importance of airmail was evident in this country due to the desert conditions and lack of communications.
Peter Brooks followed with a detailed study of the Leeward Islands stamps. The constituent islands have also had their stamps since 1903 and covers bearing mixed stamps and mixed currency were shown, together with some recognised printing flaws on stamps.
In Part 2, Vince Patel showed some most unusual aspects of GB stamps. A few consumer products have had offers of a philatelic nature. These usually consisted of a reward of Royal Mai postage stamps to be redeemed as proof of purchases. The display showed both the offers and the rewards in a complete form.
Finally, John Jackson displayed a large number of auction catalogues of the late Arthur Hind and Maurice Burrus. Both had huge important collections, which were sold by auction. The Burrus collection necessitated 70 auction catalogues. Ironically, the unique 1c British Guiana stamp was catalogued but not sold. (D.H.)
Asia and Australasia, Members’ Evening, 1 December 2017
Another presentation of interesting and varied items from the Society members comprised items from or connected with the two continents. In Part 1, the displays were India Boer War prisoners; Australian Civilian Interrupted Mail (mail to Japanese occupied Asia in WW2); Iraq; Australia and Malaysia; Copyright Labels on Australian gramophone records, and Victorian Mail to Australia and India.
In Part 2, the displays were: Russian Exploration of the Arctic; Pages from an old Belgian stamp album featuring Australia, New Zealand and Eastern Asia; Australian Year Books and Covers; Modern Japan; and the 1989 issues from Australia and New Zealand. (D.H.)
Not a Stamp in Sight, Members’ Evening, 5 January 2018
Eleven members revealed interests outside the hobby of stamp collecting. In the first part, the themes were ephemera from the reign of King George VI which included a Festival of Britain programme; an amazing display of badges; family history as revealed from roots in Australia; glass bead making at home; lace making and ornamental bobbins; the Society web site; and postal covers from or to Australia without stamps. In part 2, coloured illustrated old postcards were followed by commercial vehicle and unusual driving licences; rocket mail which never left the ground and Antarctic stamps and photographs. (D.H.)
EVENTS AND MEETINGS
Nottingham Philatelic Society (7.15 pm):
2 Feb Jersey- Andrew Pearson and Mishmash- Sandra Poole
16 Feb By Invitation (of the President)- Allen Wood
!7 Feb Annual Auction at St Peter’s Rooms, Ruddington, NG11 6 HA (12.30 pm)
2 Mar meeting cancelled due to severe weather.
16 Mar Revenues- Ed Hitchings
6 Apr TBA
20 Apr AGM and Members’ One Sheet Displays
Meetings at the Greater Nottingham Co-operative PS (6.45 for 7pm)
14 Feb Speaker- Maurice Garton
14 Mar USA- Mick Inger
11 Apr An Evening with Brian Clayton
Meetings at Radcliffe-on Trent PS
8 Feb AGM
22 Feb Germany pre-1933 David Shipstone
22 Mar New Zealand (Odds and Ends)- Andrew Dove
12 Apr My Favourite Stamps plus Why? Members
Meetings at Derby PS
8 Feb Early Ireland, Military and Derbyshire PCs- Richard Farman
8 Mar Recent Acquisitions- Members
12 Apr The Committee Entertain
Meetings at Chesterfield PS
23 Jan Auction
13 Feb The Americas up to 2 boards- Members
27 Feb Scandinavian Definitives Mick Inger
27 Mar |Malayan States Ken Clarke
10 Apr Alan Staton Memorial cup- Postcards 16 sheets
24 Apr Ceylon and Sri Lanka Barbara Inger
Stamp Fairs at Nuthall Temple Centre-14 Feb, 11 Apr, 6 Jun. 9.30- 3.30.
Spring Stampex 14-17 Feb, Business Design Centre, Islington, London. Opening times: Wed 11am- 7pm; Thurs/Fri, 10am-6pm; Sat 10am-5pm. .
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.