Past Events 2005

February 3rd 2005

A well attended meeting with 15 entries in the main competition
and 7 entries in the "six best sheets" section. winners were as follows.

General Philately:      Geoffrey Williams:

Direct administration of Burma 1937-1945. Best in Show.

Postal History:       James Norris:

Early machine cancellations on the line engraved issues of    Queen Victoria.

Thematic:           June Williams:

The Penguin Family.

My Six Best Sheets:    Brian Allcock:

Aden Sea Posts.

Our Judge as usual was Alan Griffiths, and again he found a great improvement on past years with all entries scoring highly.

March 3rd 2005

The Annual Auction saw 245 lots go under the hammer, most lots were sold and a great deal of interest was shown in the four lots of Leighton Buzzard postcards, with bids reaching almost ten times their estimate.

April 7th 2005

This month's speaker was Michael Pitt-Payne. He bought 240 sheets from his collection of postal History. The first half of the evening featured mainly Great Britain starting with pre Postal reform items, including a cover from 1830 with a postal charge of 1s 6½d. On 5th December 1839 a 4d standard letter rate was introduced and Michael showed items from this period and included items from 10th January when uniform 1d postage was introduced to May 6th 1840 with the introduction of the 1d Black. On the 1st October 1870 the ½d printed rate was introduced and on 20th April 1940 the postage due was bought into use . Michael cleverly used items from all periods and included pre-paid envelopes, post cards and returned mail to illustrate this fascinating story.

After the break Michael showed covers of U.K. to France which included Bishop marks from the 1780's and mail from the 1790's French Revolution. One item that caused a stir among members was a cover from Glasgow to France sent in 1826 and because of the friction between the two countries and various postal charges incurred a charge of 3/19 ½d.

19th April 2005

East Midland & East Anglian Philatelic Federation Annual Convention, Wisbech.

Members took winning entries from the Society competition to Wisbech where they were in competition with clubs from a very wide area of England, To their delight the Leighton Buzzard Society was Judged overall winners and was presented with the Millennium Shield for the second time in it's five year history.

Individual wins went to-

June Williams; 1st in the Thematic class.

Geoffrey Williams; 3rd in the 1 Country Class

Geoffrey Williams; 18 Sheet Aero-Philately Class, Which also won the award for the Best in Show.

James Norris; Scored highly in the Postal History Class.

Geoffrey and June display their Trophies to some fellow members.

May 5th 2005.

Hong Kong and Early Flight. Mr Peter Ball.

Peter began his display from 1830. When the British Opium trade caused some friction with the Chinese following the set up of the Hong Kong Post Office in February 1841. There were many Postmarks and overprints but no stamps before 1862. The first issues had no watermark and the second Issue of 1863 were shown and included forgeries, Peter showed many early cancellations from such places as Amoy, Canton, Foo Chow, Ning Po, Shang Hai and many more. Also shown were Hong Kong stamps on Chinese postal material. On Christmas day 1941 Hong Kong fell to Japan, which resulted in Prisoner of War mail and censor marks.

The second half of the display concentrated on Imperial Post office marks, Air Mails and Balloon Flight, Members were delighted at the chance of seeing the rare and historic items that formed Peter's display.

Peter Ball with some of his material from Hong Kong.

June 2nd 2005

The season ended with members displays beginning with the letters M and N which proved very entertaining with a wide variety of subjects. The A.G.M. saw all officers and committee re-instated.

September 1st 2005

The start of a new season and two new members shared an evening of browsing and buying with an enthusiastic group of older members, followed by a members mini auction.

October 5th 2005

Members displayed their competition entries from past years and shared in their stories of triumphs and failures, Brian Allcock displayed his recent entry of Bombay to Aden Sea posts which won him a Vermeil award at the recent Stampex show. after the break June and Geoffrey Williams, gave a demonstration on the Do's and Don't's of Competition.

October 8th 2005

Members of the Society met at the Swan Hotel to take part in the Leighton Buzzard Living Heritage Day event. Their efforts were rewarded with a good turnout from the public. Items chosen for display were Postmarks and Post Offices of Leighton Buzzard, The development of the penny Red, Post Cards and Modern G.B, Commemoratives. Also a cabinet of Button and Boot hooks courtesy of our Secretary's wife Cindy.

November 3rd 2005

Two speakers and a supporter from the Cheshunt Philatelic Society came along to show us some of their material which included some rare items of Scouting courtesy of Don Page. He started his display with Besiege mail of Mafekin showing Lord Baden Powell Leader and creator of the Scout movement. Followed by covers and stamps from World Jamboree's up to the event of 1957 which took place in Nicaragua. After the break we were treated to a display of Old Spain-New Italy courtesy of Terry Hawkins. The early Spanish material included covers from 1833 and stamps from 1850 featuring the portrait of Queen Isabella to 1868 when the Queen was deposed. All aspects were covered including watermark varieties from 1856 also featured was mail from the Spanish Islands. New Italy was represented by Terry's collection of modern definitive's which feature castles and portraits. These were covered in great detail with examples of paper varieties, printing techniques, and fluorescence. Members were delighted with the material on show form this evenings guests and promised to visit Cheshunt in the near future with some items from the Leighton Buzzard collectors.

December 3rd 2005

A large turnout with everyone bringing items which they had either recently bought or recently mounted for their collections. It was a chance for members to compare ways of writing up and mounting their Philatelic items, and it set the mood for the upcoming Competition in February 2006