News of Members

Members were saddened to hear of the death of Martyn Bell a few weeks ago. His last meeting with us had been at the film night in July 2009. Some of those present that evening will still have a souvenir from the bundles of stamp magazines that Martyn brought in.

Recent meetings

October 2009 ended with a visit from the Barry club. This was followed in November by a superb display of early Mauritius from Geoff Cooper of Swansea. Your secretary arranged the club dinner just before the Christmas rush. Fifteen members and guests had a wonderful meal at the Rhiwderin Inn on 25 November. The final meeting before Christmas was the annual ladies night. Gwen Hussey had prepared a display that Martyn Britton presented for her as she was not well enough to attend the meeting. Margaret Harding (perfins of course) and Diane Cannard (stamps of the heart) completed the displays before members tucked into some Christmas fare.

The first meeting of 2010 was due to take place on 6 January 2010. No one will forget the weather that night, which resulted in a rare cancellation because not even the Newport Civic Centre was open. We re-arranged the programme to have the letter Y night, which was slightly easier for members than last season's X. Displays included Yosemite, Ynysddu, Yemen, Y Fenni (Abergavenny), Yachts and Yellow stamps.

We then had a display from our chairman, the club auctions (entertaining as always) and the club competitions, all annual events. The number of entries was down this year but there were some excellent entries with the winners being Neil Jones with New Zealand Victory, Graham Bean with Occupied Germany 1945-1949 and Bev Davies with a thematic entry on Women of Substance

I missed the visit from the Bristol club due to baby-sitting duties in Edinburgh but I hear that the visitors, Geoffrey Ford and Mike Breward, showed some very interesting material. The visit from Bridgend saw a GB miscellany from Nigel McGaw, New Zealand special presentation packs from Maureen Phillips and Albania from Ron Gregory. Numbers were down for the visit from Roy Holliss with his Cover Love stock but he reported brisk business from those attending. April ended with a another visit, this time from the Cardiff club, with four displays covering Uganda, Nyasaland, fiscals and European postal stationery.

We also made visits to Bridgend (26 November 2009) and Barry (8 March 2010).

Junior Competition

The club introduced a 4 or 8 sheet competition for juniors on the evening of the regular club competition. Bev Davies had organised three entries, all thematic, on guides and scouts, Olympic games winners and flowers. We hope to see more entries next year.

May Pegler

We received an email from Linda Hares, a relative of May Pegler, who was a life-long member of the Newport and Gwent Philatelic Society.

May's parents John and Clara were born in Tetbury, Gloucestershire and they came to Newport in the 1870's. May was their youngest daughter. May was actually her second name, her first name being Beatrice.

May bequeathed her stamp collection to the club and now has a cup, for thematics, named in her memory.

Dennis Martin remembers May Pegler from when he joined the club in 1967. When she died on 5 September 1970, she left her collection to the club and it was decided to sell it to club members at a small auction each meeting and Dennis was given the job. Her collection was themed on Mountains and Astronomy.

Castles of Wales

The issue of stamps relating to Gwent is a rare event but on 1 March 2010 (St David's Day), Royal Mail produced a sheet of stamps celebrating Welsh Castles. The sheet had labels for ten different castles, each in a Welsh and an English language version. The background to the sheet showed an eleventh unnamed castle (actually Caerphilly). The one Gwent castle was Cas Gwent or Chepstow.

I tried to get a sheet on the day of issue but none were in stock. The post offices had thought that because they were a regular Welsh issue they would be delivered automatically but this was not the case; they had to be ordered. The main post office in Newport in Bridge Street finally got two sheets, although they ordered twenty, a week late. I was lucky to get one of these but alas with no day of issue postmark.

South Wales Federation News

The Convention to be held on 22 May 2010 in Port Talbot has received a lot of publicity because of its connection with the London 2010 exhibition. It promises to be an excellent show. A report will appear in the next newsletter.

London 2010

The international stamp exhibition was held from 8 to 15 May at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London. This is the venue for Stampex and while it is large enough for that national show it was decidedly cramped for an international exhibition and resulted in the organisers having to show half of the competitive entries at the beginning of the week and then switch over mid-week. I went on the first and second days and was disappointed not to be able to see the postal history entries, which were in the second part of the week.

Prices were high and there seemed to be little buying from collectors even on day one. Still it provided the opportunity to meet members of my specialist society (Scandinavian Philatelic Society). I also bumped into Colin Lewis (Federation treasurer) and Neil Jones (who I pointed towards the Len Jury New Zealand Victory competitive display).

I also saw one stamp missing from my collection of Sweden, the 3 skilling banco error in yellow, which is coming up in auction. As the world's rarest stamp it is difficult to guess what price it will fetch. On 6 May (suitably) The Independent reported on a new GB find, the issues of 1969 to 1974 encased in perspex. New research has shown that the paper used was different from that on the issue stamps. They are reckoned to be worth £500 each, somewhat short of the Swedish rarity but nevertheless quite a high price for a modern GB stamp.