On Tuesday March 7th 2023, Banbury Stamp Society held the Robson cup competition. We started with ‘Queen’s Remembered’ from Steve Ball, who showed stamps from Great Britain and the Channel Islands depicting the two most recent Queens Elizabeth. One stamp which few people had seen was a £5 hologram stamp from the Isle of Man. Next was ‘James Chalmers – Inventor of the Postage Stamp?’ from John Davies. The Chalmers family have spent the past 160 years to try and get the claim accepted and John included a facsimile of Chalmers stamp essay. Mike Fernbank put up ‘Malta Flight covers’ that went on first or early flights including India, African countries and European destinations – all from the early 1930’s. Jonathan Durley followed with the first air mail flights of 1911. Mail was flown from London to Windsor from September 9th, 1911 up to Christmas of that year. The service was set up as a charity fund-raiser ‘in commemoration of the coronation’. A third air mail presentation came from Gareth Williams with a display of the Newfoundland stamp issued for the Italian Balbo seaplane flight across the Atlantic in 1933. We finished with Peter Fernbank and the 1954 Bahamas definitive pictorial issue, designed to advertise the Bahamas as a tourist destination. It included overprints from the 1964 Olympics and the 1962 Bahamas Talks between John F Kennedy and Harold MacMillan which lead to the Polaris missile being adopted by Britain.
The competition was judged by the membership and the winner for a second year running was Jonathan Durley.
The next presentation evening will be on Netherlands East Indies Postal History on Tuesday 4th April 2023 at 7:30pm at the Hanwell Fields Community Centre. The Banbury Stamp Society is on-line at ‘www.banburystampsociety.co.uk’, or contact John Davies on 01295 255831.