Great Britain Philatelic Society

Received from Isobel Klempka at the Philatelic Traders Society: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am delighted to let you know, that you have been nominated for a PTS Award. The judges are currently deciding who the winners and runners up will b...

As someone with an interest in GB express mail (albeit a somewhat piecemeal collection), I can state confidently that I can't recall any other examples of this use of special messengers, or even that I've ever noted that the possibility existed! Many of these non-standard express services are rare. ...

Unfortunately, due to the rail strike that has been announced for 14th December, SG have had to cancel this evening, as they cannot guarantee that they will be able to be sufficiently staffed. They hope that it can be rescheduled for the New Year. Calling collectors of Imperforate Penny Reds! We ha...

Sorry, Ian -- I was supplied with publications 3-15, but they start at 1996.

The latest ABPS News is available here as a download for members: Click to download gbps The Society continues to be affiliated to the Association of British Philatelic Societies whose editor appreciates receiving your philatelic news. The quarterly publications are available here about 3 months bef...

Fairly sure that a lot of mail to overseas going via south coast ports would have been directed to London first and sorted there, yes -- certainly from Scotland and most of England and Wales. Some nearer offices may have despatched to the port directly. It wouldn't have been for all colonial mail --...

Page has been added at:

https://www.gbps.org.uk/information/rates/overseas/surface/reduced-rate-countries.php

That's a fair point -- destinations were added to and removed from the list of "Empire" countries at various different times. I'll do a page to list them and the dates concerned.

Just noticed this thread again ... The number 3 in the Burnley postmark/date stamp has a straight top ! How can you compare this to being a 6 ? Burnley.png As Winston says, looks curved to me? The ink seems to be fading out just as the curve starts, which is why it looks straighish if you don't blow...

The reports presented to the AGM on 18th June and the minutes of the meeting.

Advanced Notice – 1 December 2022 GBPS Display to the RPSL The GBPS have been invited by the President of the Royal Philatelic Society London, Peter Cockburn, to display to their society on Thursday 1 December 2022. The GBPS council has gratefully accepted this offer to display and it has been adde...

I think both town datestamps are actually partial strikes of the last digit that happen to look rather like a "3"? I'm fairly sure the Burnley one is actually 1856, and I suspect the Bury one is actually 1858 -- in which case both would be just normal usages.

The GBPS website was awarded Best in Class for "Digital Literature" at London 2022, with a total of 95 marks and the only Large Gold medal awarded in this class. Treatment of Contents 38/40 Originality and Research 38/40 Technical 15/15 Presentation 4/5 Total 95/100 A great result! London ...

The winner of the Grand Prix National at London 2022 (for an outstanding exhibit of Great Britain) was former GBPS President Howard Hughes with his exhibit of The Maltese Cross . Most of the items in the exhibit were included in Howard's President's Display to the GBPS in 2017, which can be seen in ...

London 2022.jpg There are some strong entries for the National classes of the exhibition, both Traditional and Postal History. This will make for a great competition for the Grand Prix National. Pictured here is the prize for this, being an Edwardian silver-topped claret jug that has been donated b...

The Collectors Club of New York has named the GBPS President Chris Harman as the 2022 recipient of its prestigious Alfred F. Lichtenstein Memorial Award for Distinguished Service to Philately. harman-lichtenstein-award.jpg Chris is a specialist in classic issues, forgeries, revenues, locals and cind...

Transport for London has announced that the Northern line (Bank branch) will be closed between Kennington and Moorgate from Saturday 15 January to mid-May 2022 . This is due to work they are doing to improve the capacity at Bank station. During the closure, there will be no Northern line service, in...

Apart from the QV line-engraved, fairly confident that up until the early £sd Machin period it was always natural gum arabic -- that would be standard for KGV/KGVI. Can't recall any other gum types being used until you get into the synthetics in the QEII era.

More than fifty towns in Scotland used manuscript "town name marks", usually with the rate to Edinburgh appended, before town name handstamps were issued. About 180 individual examples of these marks are known: these are summarised in Rex Clark’s excellent book, Manuscript Town Markings on...

The conclusion now is that the only possible end to this is to find the company that had EC 19 as its designated corporate sub post office number. That is quite unlikely unless the company had an illustrated envelope it used and one of them was registered. But that would be gilding the lily! Ah no,...

Ah, this is a postal history "gotcha". The E.C.19 in this case identifies the post office, not the delivery area. Basically, when registration labels were introduced in 1907, town sub-offices were identified on the labels by the name of the town (or London district) and a sub-office number...

It's the time of year to start thinking about our annual competitions. Competitions Day is usually very well attended, and an enjoyable meeting for all with a wide range of material on display. After the success of last season’s virtual Competitions Day, we have decided to maintain a virtual element...

stampex-2021-landscape.png Autumn Stampex Tickets This year Autumn Stampex will be a ticketed event. All but the first day will be FREE ... but you are still required to pre-book a ticket. The ticket options are as follows: Opening Day Pass -- £10 which gives access on the first day and provides au...

These files will be available as printed copies for the room meeting, and are presented here for the benefit of members attending via Zoom (click the links to download).

GBPS Report and Accounts

Officers' Reports

Airmail rates are given in the airmail leaflets (https://www.gbps.org.uk/airmail-leaflets), but for a more fine-grained view the best book is Michael Furfie's British Civilian Postage Rates of the 20th Century . Only about £6 and one of the essential books -- I think he's still selling them, mrfu54@...

Hi Larry -- that sounds interesting. I'm guessing from that number that you're referring to the Penny Reds with letters in all four corners? Something to identify the stamps when the numbers are obscured would definitely have value.

They're the regular Part 1/Concise numbers -- 138 is for the ones on blued paper, 139 the white paper, and for some reason (probably it seemed like a good idea at the time in the 1890s or thereabouts) the LH-FL error on plate 2 is given its own number, 140. The modern preference is to just use one n...

Well, differences of this type are more Specialised Catalogue level -- the last one for decimal Machins was about 1990 I think, so they may be in there! If I'm reading the (complicated) Deegam listings correctly, the value settings can vary between columns in a single booklet. SG seem not to have li...

The Deegam catalogue lists several variant settings of this value from booklet and coil stamps -- the shades could noticeably vary with those as well. The light coloured one here looks like a booklet stamp with guillotined top perfs?

Probably it's something you need to put together yourself, unfortunately -- it depends a lot on what periods you collect and what level of detail with regards to shades, varieties etc. That said, if I do come across anything like this it would be worth putting on the site as a download!

No problem. Another major use I forgot to mention was on telegraph forms -- again usually cancelled with a nice cds. They were supposed to be destroyed, like the internal forms, but a lot of stamps torn from them did "leak" out to the trade. They're the source of a lot of the nice cds canc...

Very few 10s-and-above high values were actually used postally before the 1920s/30s and high airmail rates. The typical 19th century use was on internal accounting documents for postage due, which I think continued as a system up to 1914 when postage due labels were introduced. That's why you get su...

The standard reference books for registered envelopes are British Postal Stationery by Alan Huggins (1970/71) and Collect British Postal Stationery by Alan Huggins and Colin Baker (2007). The former is much more detailed but harder to follow, and obviously doesn't include the decimal issues or new i...

As all of you will have noticed on the back of your programme card sent to you mid year, there are the contact details of members prepared to offer advice and information on different aspects of GB philately. We recommend their knowledge to you! Equally, you will have noticed that the QEII reign is ...

Announcement from the Philatelic Traders’ Society: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Philatelic Traders’ Society are delighted to announce that we have opened registrations for the next Virtual Stampex. To register just head to stampex.vf...

With Sark's permission, I've done a PDF version of this, with OCR'd text and bookmarks to the main sections (approx 50MB). It can be downloaded from the website at:

https://www.gbps.org.uk/information/sources/staff-handbooks.php

was it customary to keep a supply of mourning covers on hand or were they prepared as required? For a large household -- especially a royal household where correct protocol was very important -- I suspect they kept a supply on hand, especially if they needed to have a crest added on the flap. Was t...

As I understand it, the magazines are enveloped and sent direct from the printers -- so postage is paid by whatever method they adopt. It's unfortunate, but stuffing several hundred magazines into envelopes and posting with stamps six times a year would be a major job for whichever poor member got l...

Due to the hearteningly large number of submissions for the GBPS One Page Humorous Presentations Zoom meeting yesterday, the Christmas Quiz had to be omitted from the programme to keep the meeting to a reasonable length. You can, however, download it here! (If you have PowerPoint available, that pre...

Only online reference I know is

http://gbvictorianpostmarks.co.uk/wp/ro ... liverpool/

There are some blue-black inks -- possibly just mixed inks due to using the wrong pad?

GBStampsConference750px.jpg A special online conference dedicated to collecting classic GB stamps will take place on the popular www.allaboutstamps.co.uk website from 12 to 14 November. Being held in partnership with the Great Britain Philatelic Society (GBPS), the online event follows the success ...

Following the announcement that we intended to run a series of virtual meetings at the start of the new season, this is to bring you up to speed with the emerging programme and invite your participation. We will be using the Zoom platform as this seems to be one that most members are familiar with. ...

Since this was posted new Government regulations have been issued, under which meetings will not be able to go ahead. Please keep an eye on the website for developments. Since the Newsletter and Programme Card went to the printers we have had confirmation from the Royal that we will be able to hold...

Introduction There will be some social distancing rules in place for our meetings for the foreseeable future. These will no doubt change over time but in essence what they are currently is as outlined below. While in the RPSL Building We must abide by the rules set out by the RPSL. You will be brie...

Under Rule 4(ix) , a member of the GBPS may be elected as an Honorary Life Member. Traditionally, such election has occurred for members giving exceptional and long service to the Society. At the beginning of 2020, there were only two, Bill Bird and Alan Huggins, the last election having been made i...

The official term was "packet bands", so "bands" is a perfectly reasonable shorthand. George King is the man who knows most about which band goes with which item of stationery (and has displayed various selections at meetings), but unfortunately he's not online. If you contact me...

As a member of the Society, you are entitled to vote in person by attending the Annual General Meeting. The Rules of the Society do not provide for proxy voting but in the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 virus preventing a meeting of members at the Royal Philatelic Society London on 20th J...

Good points -- the 1875 rates are there for postcards (because that's what I had been specifically looking for when I did that page), but not for the others, probably because they used to start at 1892 and I only recently extended them back to 1875.

Thanks John -- I've updated the relevant pages to include a note stating specifically that the rates shown initially applied only to UPU countries (with any existing agreements applying otherwise), but were made general from 1st January 1892. (BTW, when I looked the samples etc Treasury Warrant was ...

At the time of writing the exhibition has not been cancelled, although this is obviously a strong possibility. The official website has updates:

http://www.london2020.co/

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