Society Archive

At the July zoom meeting Chris Hill gave a very detailed and informative display of “Germany to Unification”, with scans of all the many different stamps involved over a complex period for Germany.

The early August meeting in Cambridge was a Members’ Evening “Show What You like”. As is usual at such meetings a very varied range of stamps and covers were displayed.

For the September zoom display the society teamed up with Harrogate PS for a series of short six minutes maximum displays from as many participants as possible over an almost two hour connection. A mixture of mainly stamp displays and postal history were very evident across the evening covering a wide area of philately.

Rufus Barnes, gave two different displays in early October. The first covered Burma which commenced with many different shipping covers and covers from travelling post offices. This was followed by a series of WW1 censorship marks on covers and then various WW2 covers depicting the east Africa Brigade.

The second half comprised Abu Dhabi with postal covers and the first stamps of 1964, followed by re-prints and varieties. Many later issued stamps and covers followed, including a batch of aerograms.

At the beginning of April we held the second of our two competition evenings. Graham Wylde won both the Commonwealth and also the 16 sheet competitions with Tony Crowther winning the Transportation of Mail competition. Our thanks are due to our friends from North Herts Stamp Club who kindly carried out the judging.

For our May meeting we had a visit from three members of the Sudbury & District PS who gave very mixed and interesting range of displays for the evening.

The Annual General Meeting of the Society was held at the beginning of June. The majority of committee members were re-elected for another year, and we welcomed in Rufus Barnes as our new president who took over from Graham Wylde.

On 3rd July we welcomed our member Earl Toops back to Cambridge; he is a long serving member of the society who lives in the USA. He gave a detailed and informative slide show covering the “Regime Change in Vietnam”. The talk covered the Stamp Issues of the Provisional Revolutionary Government and the restoration of postal services in the defeated South during the 1970’s.

We kicked off January 2024 with a members’ evening based on the letters D, E & F. As is usual we were shown a very wide variety of philatelic material by members embracing just under 180 sheets.

At the beginning of February we had the first of two competition evenings. Graham Wylde won both the Postal History and also the Great Britain competitions with Adrian Boggust winning the Thematic competition. Our thanks are due to our two friends from King’s Lynn P.S. who kindly carried out the judging.

During the judging of the latter competitions Michael Kemp gave a very informative and well researched display covering Hubert Wilkins, the polar explorer.

Early March was the Society Auction evening when a range of interesting lots, especially many commonwealth items, were on offer. It was a good evening with a modest contribution being made to Society funds.

At the beginning of October we had a special evening when Graham Wylde gave a very detailed display of GB Queen Victoria Line Engraved used stamps which covered the period 1847 to 1902. The display included the different watermark varieties and plate numbers from this series of stamps.

In early November we had an excellent display of Edinburgh Postal History up to 1900 by Tony Crowther. A very comprehensive range of post marks on cover from 1765 was displayed which included the introduction of the 1d Post in 1793 and also the Uniform Postal Arrangements introduced in 1839.

2024 will commence with a members’ evening based on the letters D, E & F.