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Newsletter June 09 Editor: Michael Round
AGM TIME. By
now you should all have received official notification of the forthcoming AGM.
It takes place at our usual venue, St Andrew’s Church Hall, Herbert
Road, SW19, on Tuesday June 16th, and starts promptly at 8pm.
By unlucky coincidence, this is the same day as the joint auction
hosted by Wallington & Carshalton.
Its catalogue is enclosed: may I gently remind those of you intending to
be at the AGM that postal bidding facilities for this auction are available (a
printed form is also enclosed - or you can email your bids), and careful reading
of the catalogue should disclose some extremely modest starting prices.
Remember, participation in these joint auctions is one of the facilities
your subscription pays for. Do make
the most of it. A PROPOS OF WHICH…
Now that five local societies all participate in these joint auctions, there are
plenty of buyers out there ready to snap up your duplicates and unwanted
material. In particular,
Twickenham’s auction début last season proved very successful for vendors.
At present we only have three regular WDPS vendors (and one non-member):
do consider becoming one yourself. Just toss your surplus into stock-cards,
envelopes or whatever with a quick description (SG or other numbers, cat price,
plus reserve or estimate), ready for passing on to me ready for inclusion in a
future auction. HELP WANTED.
Wimbledon will be hosting the next joint auction, on Tuesday November
16th at our new auction venue, Christ the King Church Hall, 9
Crescent Gardens (off Arthur Road), Wimbledon Park, SW19.
We used this place for the first time last season, and most people were
very pleased with it – not least because you could park nearby and bring
and/or take away bulky items in comfort. To
make this an effective evening (and, of course, to dazzle all the other
societies!) we really need a full team of helpers: auctioneer (I can just
about manage that myself), plus a couple of ‘runners’ – who gently
supervise the viewing before the auction, round up and show each lot (and
deliver it to its buyer) during it, and stand by to deal with subsequent sales
of unsold material after it. Most
importantly, we need a book-keeper - someone to record the hammer price
and purchaser of each lot during the auction (I have template forms to make this
easy), and help out with the arithmetic afterwards.
Please contact me soon if you feel you can help on the day – we only
just managed last time. NEW MEMBER. Since
the last Newsletter we’ve been delighted to be joined by new member Julian
Holliday, whose specialities are Argentina and King George VI. EXCHANGE PACKETS, PLURAL. We are all still invited,
through the kindness of its Packet Secretary Mark Hugo, to join the circuit run
by the Epsom & Ewell society. Better
yet, our own Packet Secretary Ray Roberts has placed a new Wimbledon exchange
packet into circulation, the first for some time.
Do contact Ray if you want to join the circulation list. RECENT MEETINGS.
Ray Downing entertained us on President’s Night (the latest in
an awe-inspiring and possibly record-breaking series from him) with a
“something for everyone” mixed bag including Stamp Positioning (on the
envelope, that is), GB Charity Cancels, Some French Proofs, and (again from
France) the Marianne de Dulac issue. Generous indeed: and as if that weren’t enough, Ray was one
of three members valiantly plugging the following month’s gap caused by the
unavoidable and much lamented postponement of Dennis Preddy’s scheduled talk
on Botswana. Ray showed a selection
of GB Postal Stationery. Paul Wright had opened with a magnificent
display of the Vendyre Provisionals of Jamaica: only three stamps (SG 30, O1 and
O2) but with scope for specialisation enough to fill 144 sheets, all written-up
to luxury-handbook standard, and all generously made available for inspection on
line. Malcolm Norris rounded
off the evening with a departure from his normal specialism, Coins on Stamps, by
showing us a wide range of Railway thematics, including – neatly – some
issues from Botswana. Many thanks
to all, for providing a splendid evening’s entertainment at short notice.
FROM OUR WIRRAL CORRESPONDENT. I
am indebted, as always, to member John Davies, who sends down from sunny
Merseyside a regular and most welcome supply of trenchant comments on current GB
issues. He offers a list of alternative commemorations to those scheduled for
2010, this being the anniversary year of (among others) Harry Lauder, the Eagle
comic, the Korean War, the births of Princess Anne (1950) and Price Andrew
(1960) – and the end of National Service.
All good debatable stuff: I’m reminded of those endless 3c commems from
the USA, issued to appease one political faction after another.
Whatever the reason for issue, my own annual lament (prompted by the
mounting-up of such postally used commems as I’ve been able to locate) is that
so many often-splendid designs are seen by so few people. John also points out the collectable potential of the new security-minded
Machins (you know, the ones that won’t soak off), with their two varieties of
U-shaped slits and (currently) four versions of background wording: MAIL, MBIL,
MSIL and MTIL. And in deploring the
rip-off percentage price-rises among the latest postage rates (e,g, 1st
Large Letter, from 60p to 76p in two years), John suggests a cunning but quite
legal fight-back in pointing out that the use of two 15p stamps to frank a
second-class letter will fool the Royal Mail machinery into treating it as first
class. He reminds us, too, that anyone stashing away quantities of 1st
Large stamps two years ago will have seen their face value rise by 26.7%.
Far better than money in the bank – but then, almost anything is, these
days. DROPPING LIKE FLIES.
The latest Philatelic Exporter (June) reports the closure of
another London stamp address, 110 St Martin’s Lane.
This had housed dealers since the 1980s, the first incumbent being Leo
Baresch. The latest, the Royale
Stamp Company, has relocated to 79 Strand, home of parent company Steven
Scott. The Cecil Court Stamp
Shop has also either already closed or is just about to: all very sad, for
those of us who remember the good old days.
(Visit Paris, walk along the Rue Drouot, compare and weep.)
Alternatively, if the lack of stamp shops makes a visit to Central London
seem less and less worth the trouble to you, contact Ray Downing if all you want
are albums, catalogues, spare leaves or other accessories.
Ray makes periodic trips to Vera Trinder (still at 38 Bedford
Street) and can obtain items for you. Till the next time… Michael Round
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