On 18th February members of Banbury Stamp Society were invited to complete for the Robson Cup. Named after a former member, the competition allows members to display and talk about up to 6 A4 sheets of philatelic material of their choice. Six members competed.
Malcolm Moodie started first showing stamps produced in France during the liberation period. After D Day 16 towns and cities were allowed to overprint stamps to celebrate their liberation. In fact, 98 settlements issued such stamps overprinting Vichy stamps with words like “Libre” or “RF” or the Cross of Lorraine. Malcolm was able to show many examples of these stamps.
Next John Davies explained that he supports international stamp exhibitions and intended to do so in 2020 but covid delayed the exhibition until 2022. He showed souvenirs of the 1940 exhibition overprinted “2020” but not issued until 2022, souvenirs from the awards dinner held in the London guildhall and his own souvenirs made up from remainder stock from the grand 1890 exhibition.
Paul Pritchard showed six early letters from the period before stamps were used. He showed examples of “Bishop marks” introduced in an attempt to make Royal Mail more efficient along with “Docwra” marks suppressed by Royal mail as competition and examples of receivers marks and coffee house mail.
David Hood showed six letters which had been damaged by enemy action in World War II. Several were in poor condition reflecting the fact that they had genuinely been through the wars. Some still contained letters and messages and David read out part of a letter describing an air raid on the writer’s home suburb in London. This led one of our members to explain that as a young child they were also in that very same air raid.
Peter Fernbank displayed mint condition examples of the first commemorative stamps issued by the Bahamas. The first set celebrated the end of WW1 and the second set celebrated the tercentenary of the colony. Both displayed a badge with a Latin motto celebrating the suppression of piracy and the expansion of commerce in the islands an important event in their development.
Finally, Jonathan Durley displayed examples the “security rings” applied to British postal stationary during the Victorian period. He explained that postal stationary was not massively popular in Britain but companies used them to communicate with customers and to stop staff stealing them security overprints were added. The stationer WH Smith produced a lot of such material but others are quite rare. Jonathan displayed many examples of the genre.
All those present were invited to vote for their favourite displays and after a very close result David Hood was declared the winner of the 2025 Robson Cup competition.
The next meeting will be on Tuesday 4th March when John Walker will show “The Postal History of the Korean War”. Meet at 7:30pm at Hanwell Fields Community Centre. The Banbury Stamp Society is on-line at ‘www.banburystampsociety.co.uk’, or contact John Davies on 01295 255831.