1st December 2015 – Members to Display Letter “E”

On Tuesday 1st December Banbury Stamp Society members provided their own entertainment, displaying items on the theme of ‘the Letter E’. This is a regular meeting title with many philatelic societies, working through the alphabet from year to year and it is always entertaining to see how some members shoehorn their collecting interests into a match for the given letter. We started with Estonia with material from the Second World War period when the country went from independence to German and then Russian occupation. Next came Envelopes with mis-perforated 1d reds: interesting to see that the Victorians were quite casual about using stamps with the perforations offset by up to half the width – or height – of the stamp. WWII governments in Exile was an interesting take on the subject: Norway, Poland, the Dutch and France all had governments in exile and many of them issued stamps from London, some of which were recognised as such but many were regarded as labels. With the accession of Edward VII, The Bahamas introduced a new definitive set with a conch shell and a pineapple in the border and we were presented with material that described the changes to this detail of the design. Next came a short lived GB stamp which had the letter E rather than a value. This was a European rate non-value indicator and was printed in sheets and booklets for a few years in the 1990’s. We finished with stamps on cover from Egypt up to 1953, including an interesting letter posted in 1888 to the UK from an archaeologist working in Luxor near the Valley of Kings.