On Tuesday 19th January Banbury Stamp Society members welcomed Colin Searle as their speaker. Colin presented material from Philatelic Congress of Great Britain meetings from 1909 through to 1963. Philatelic Congress is an opportunity for philatelists to meet, display their material, visit local attractions and celebrate the achievements of the members. As well as showing items from his collection, Colin also made use of a laptop and projector to run a Powerpoint presentation. This allowed him to show some additional material as well as include scans of items blown up to show detail and was very effective.
The first Philatelic Congress was held in 1909 in Manchester and has run annually ever since, with breaks for the two World Wars. Colin’s collection arose when he got involved in the 2008 Congress held at his home society, and followed up with the Centenary event in 2009, for which Colin was loaned 14 boxes of archive material from which to make up a commemorative booklet. This was published in 2009 and Colin very generously presented the society with a copy for our library. Since then, Colin has built up his own collection of souvenir booklets, menus, labels, postmarked covers and autographs and this was what he presented, accompanied by a range of facts, figures and anecdotes.
The Philatelic Congress developed into the governing body for Philately in Great Britain and is currently operating as the Association of British Philatelic Societies Ltd. (ABPS).
The next meeting will be on Tuesday February 2nd at 7:30pm at Hanwell Fields Community Centre. The Society will be holding its annual Robson Cup Competition for three to six sheets of stamps or covers. The Banbury Stamp Society can now be found on-line at ‘www.banburystampsociety.co.uk’.