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Calendar for the 2011-
The Calendar and Journal of our Meetings
Each year, we try to bring a varied, not to say eclectic, range of subjects to the fore, with the aim of providing an interesting experience to all our members and guests. Hopefully, we succeed.
Very occasionally, for reasons beyond our control, it may be necessary to re-
Calendar for the 2011-
To make things clearer, we've colour coded the type of meeting:
[ ] Blue is for regular Members' Evenings,
[ ] Green is for Evenings where a visiting speaker will make a
presentation, and
[ ] Red is for the AGM. Be there, or be on the Committee next year!
6th September 2011 The Season opens with our first Guest Speaker of the year. Mr
Philip Lea will introduce us to the philately of the Empire of the Sun -
4th October 2011 This evening is the first of our Members' Evenings for the year. The theme is entirely open, but there must be some connection with the letters 'M’ and ‘M’. In case you are wondering, they are both the same, so the evening will be a double challenge!
1st November 2011
What could be more pleasant than an extended river cruise? This evening, our former member Mr Robert Flamman will take us from the Black Forest to the Black Sea by way of the Danube. Blue? We’ll see!
6th December 2011 We all enjoyed our 80th Anniversary Dinner last year, so this year we will combine our December meeting with a pleasant Dinner, and Ralph Stuttard will entertain us in his own inimitable Philatelic style.
3rd January 2012 Our third Guest Speaker of the year is Mr Adrian Jones, from Chorley, who will be introducing us to the world of Errors and Varieties, Part I. This should be a fascinating presentation, and no mistake!
7th February 2012 There are many and varied reasons why we, individually, collect stamps, and within our collections are stamps or sets which we particularly like. This evening we will Show, and Tell the reasons why.
6th March 2012 Our meeting this evening is one of those where we enjoy two separate presentations from our members. Ian Koller will extend our knowledge of Philatelic Ornithology, while Chris Leather will present a review of Commonwealth War Tax stamps.
3rd April 2012 COMPETITION EVENING
The Competition this year is for the John Winter Trophy. Entries for this competition should consist of twelve sheets of stamps and philatelic material, used to develop a specific theme.
1st May 2012 THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Not just the AGM, but also the Club Auction, where the success of the sales can have a marked effect on the subscription for the coming year!
5th June 2012 The final meeting of the Season is our Postcard Evening and this year we will be paying tribute to our great heritage by displaying cards featuring anything to do with industrial activity.
The Journal
To read the narrative Journal for any meeting, just click, and we will take you directly there
6th September 2011
The first meeting of the Season coincided with the first Guest Speaker of the Season, when Mr Philip Lee gave us a presentation on the subject of Stamps of Japan. For a number of years, Mr Lee had been based in, and travelled to, Nagoya, on behalf of a number of Japanese companies, which gave him an excellent opportunity to collect a wide range of Japanese postal and cinderella material.
The presentation opened with a display of a wide range of postal stationery, particularly featuring New Year Greetings cards from the 1930s onwards. Included among these were examples of cards and stamps issued with lottery numbers. A complete sheet of stamps, offered as a departure gift, proved to contain one stamp with a winning number. Now, this is a complete sheet of mint stamps with the exception of one which has been cancelled!
Next we saw a series of Season’s Greetings and first Flight covers for a number of routes to and from Japan, and material sold and struck with special cachets from various tourist destinations. Finally, we were introduced to the wide range of art styles used on Japanes stamps including a marked delight in cartoon characters.
4th October 2011
The theme for the evening was our ever-
Approriately, Mr Marten opened proceedings with a display entitled ‘My Family and other Animals’ the subject of an exam he had once taken in Swahili. Featured were Martens, Monkeys, Marmosets, Moles, Marsupials, Manatees, Musquash, Molluscs and Moths!
Mr Patterson moved us to the Morocco Agencies, from the time of George V to the closure of the Agencies under Elizabeth II.
Mr Kipps took us on a gentle meander through a few Motoring Museums n Hungary, East Germany, France, Portugal, Andorra and our own Midlands: the Mold Motor Museum at Stratford on Avon.
Mr Robinson reMinded us of Memories and Malta, taking us from the times of the Knights of Malta, when postal services started there, through the period of Napoleon, up to the colonial period.
Mr Koller mentioned that he was not memorable only for birds of prey; we learned much about the breeding and incubation habits of migratory Merkins, followed by Martial eagles.
The evening closed with a miscellany from Mr Stuttard, a marvellous melange starting with Mulreadys, and a monograph on ‘More to Pay’ markings, moving through Matthews’ Miniature sheet for Midpex, to a Map of Montenegro. He concluded by proving that only Smarties have the answer!
1st November 2011
We were pleased to welcome the (temporary!) return of our former Member Mr Robert Flamman who took us on a journey from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, via the Danube.
Our journey started in the Kingdom of Wurttemburg where two tributaries feed into
a well at Donauschingen, which is said to be the source of the Danube. Covers, postcards
and Postal History from towns and cities along the way marked our progress until
we arrived at Ulm, with its cathedral and 560-
6th December 2011
Last year, we went to the Royal Clifton Hotel for our Club’s 80th Anniversary Dinner. We enjoyed the proceeding enough to repeat the process this year. An excellent meal was followed by an illustrated presentation by Mr Stuttard of cards and other items proving that everything is related to everything else. A great evening!
3rd January 2012
The January meeting saw us welcome Mr Adrian Jones from Chorley who gave us the first part of his presentation on ‘Errors and Varieties’ and proved that it is still possible to make philatelic ‘finds’ such as a sheet of stamps from Nigeria, with greatly misplaced perforations, found in the back of an auction lot!
Errors can consist of missing or misplaced colours or perforations, or the use of
the wrong colours or perforations. They can also include problems arising from the
printing process itself. We were shown examples of Harrison’s GB £5 ‘Castle’ stamps,
catalogued in only one colour, with three quite distinct variations. Examples of
British commemorative stamps from the 1960s and 70s showed a range of missing colours,
doctor blade flaws, and flaws due to faults on the printing cylinders. A range of
varieties was shown where design features are accidentally (?) added, deleted, or
altered, such as the well-
We were shown a range of forgeries of stamps, cancellations, and sometimes both together. We learned about some famous forgeries, for example the 24p Machin, the products of the Maryland forger, and those of Fournier, the master forger. Overprints, too, are a good source of E&Vs, and we saw examples from the Nyasaland Field Force with a missing ‘F’ and stamps from Zanzibar after the revolution when obliterating the Sultan’s head just became too much trouble!
All in all, a great evening, and no mistake!