The Postmaster Newsletter of the New Haven Philatelic Society Fall/Winter 2018 No. 86 Hitchins Competition Every year, the New Haven Philatelic Society holds an open competition for all members. This competition, known as the Hitchins Competition in honor of a former member, consists of four pages, any subject, any country. The pages can be typed, printed, or handwritten, and are judged by members present at the meeting designated for the competition. The idea is to encourage every member to display some part of their collection so that other members can enjoy and learn from them. The winner receives a prizes redeemable at one of our monthly shows. This year the competition, held in September each year, had four members compete - each one submitted an interesting and different exhibit The winner this year was Ray Petersen, a new member, who created a four page exhibit of “Cinderella” stamps (often called poster stamps). Jesse Williams brought in four pages of forgeries, Vern Nelson brought in an exhibit that combined genealogy with postal history, and Mike Frechette brought in a Halloween exhibit. As in past competitions, the winner was decided by the members present at the meeting. Voting was tight, but the winner was duly selected and congratulated. As we have for previous winners, Ray was given a $30 gift certificate valid at our Fourth Sunday Show. The photograph at right shows parts of two exhibits, the top featuring fakes submitted by Jesse Williams, and the bottom featuring history of a family submitted by Vern Nelson. On the left, the top exhibit is the award winner submitted by Ray Petersen, the bottom is a Halloween exhibit submitted by Mike Frechette.
Transcript
The Postmaster
Newsletter of the New Haven Philatelic Society
Fall/Winter 2018 No. 86
Hitchins Competition
Every year, the New Haven Philatelic Society holds an open competition for all members. This competition, known as the Hitchins Competition in honor of a former member, consists of four pages, any subject, any country. The pages can be typed, printed, or handwritten, and are judged by members
present at the meeting designated for the competition. The idea is to encourage every member to display some part of their collection so that other members can enjoy and learn from them. The winner receives a prizes redeemable at one of our monthly shows. This year the competition, held in September each year, had four members compete - each one submitted an interesting and different exhibit The winner this year was Ray Petersen, a new member, who created a four page exhibit of “Cinderella” stamps (often called poster stamps). Jesse Williams brought in four pages of forgeries, Vern Nelson brought in an exhibit that combined genealogy with postal history, and Mike Frechette brought in a Halloween exhibit. As in past competitions, the winner was decided by the members present at the meeting. Voting was
tight, but the winner was duly selected and congratulated. As we have for previous winners, Ray was given a $30 gift certificate valid at our Fourth Sunday Show.
The photograph at right shows parts of two exhibits, the top featuring fakes submitted by Jesse Williams, and the bottom featuring history of a family submitted by Vern Nelson. On the left, the top exhibit is the award winner submitted by Ray Petersen, the bottom is a Halloween exhibit submitted by Mike Frechette.
2017/2018 Office Holders President- Mike Frechette Treasurer-Ken Allen
Vice President- Marcia Meyers Secretary-Vern Nelson
The New Haven Philatelic Society Editor: Vacant PO Box 8141 New Haven Connecticut 06530 USA Email:[email protected] Webpage: http://www.nhps1914.com Facebook: Facebook.com/nhps1914
Once upon a time, humans wandered around, looking for food and gathering it and bringing it back to where they were camped for the night. As long as the local food supply held up, they stayed in that location. When the food gave out, they would pack up and leave. Sometimes they hunted for food, sometimes they would trap their food, or fish, or gather fruits or nuts or any combination of methods all designed to get them the food they needed to survive. Our psyche is so engrained with the hunting imperative that there are cultures which still do that today. And for those of us who do not have to hunt, we do it now for enjoyment or to fulfill some undefined need. There are some people today who believe that a return to the life style of Paleolithic man is necessary to restore our natural health. After all, they argue, hunter gatherers do not have heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other modern ailments. Of course, the average life expectancy of Paleolithic man was around 33 years- they did not live long enough to get such diseases. We, however, live longer today, and lead a more sedentary lifestyle. Each of us, in our own way, carries the traits of hunter-gatherer mentality, especially when it comes to stamp collecting. “I am hunting for this particular stamp,” you say to a stamp dealer (friend, fellow collector), “Do you have it or do you know where I can get it?” and off you go on the hunt. When you find what you want, you gather it in, carefully bring it back to your “cave”, and savor the beauty and substance of your philatelic “food”. The same goes for when we obtain a collection of stamps- we hunted it down, captured it using as few of our resources as feasible, then bring it home to pick it clean. When done, if we are lucky, we find the collection was all protein, and little fat. When done, we discard the bones. Which is why we all have this pile of half empty collections sitting in our caves. We do not believe in bonfires for the remains, as this would negate all our efforts in gathering these mental food scraps into our abodes. So there they sit. Eventually, humans figured out that they were better off growing their own food rather than traipsing around the countryside looking for it. We can’t do that with our philatelic items, as governments tend to frown upon self created stamps, especially when we try to use them for postage.
Not that this stops anyone, as even today there are fake stamps to be had on Ebay. (See https://www.foxnews.com/us/counterfeit-stamps-giving-postal-service-a-lickin for an example). Early man would draw rudimentary pictures on cave walls illustrating his various kills and exploits. He would use the best materials he had available, the finest mud, the purest charcoal, and in his quiet leisure hours during the cold winters, carefully construct his masterpiece, signing it by blowing dust around his hand leaving the outline on the wall. Today, we do it by creating exhibits at stamp shows. Except the judges
frown upon the use of charcoal. Seems it ruins the stamps. Enjoy the hunt! And display your trophies! We have been doing it for millennia.
We have bidden farewell recently to two of our members who have decided to leave beautiful Connecticut and reside in other states. Campbell Buchanan, our longtime newsletter editor, has moved to Florida. Maxim Thibodeau has moved to North Caroline. Both were active members, and attended the weekly meetings quite often. Both will be sorely missed, but thankfully, both have said they remain committed to the Society and stamp collecting. Happy collecting gentlemen!
A New Life Member
The Society recently voted to make Campbell Buchanan a life member is honor of his dedicated service to the club over the last ten years as our editor. Campbell, now living in Florida (see above) does visit us periodically, as he still travel up north on occasion. At the last meeting he attended, we happily told Campbell our decision, and he was extremely grateful. This brings our current number of life members to nine- several life members recently have passed on.
A Resurgent Member
Myron Kavalgian recently gave members an interesting talk about Arthur Szyk. Arthur Szyk was a talented artist who not only created political artwork, but he also produced Stamp Album covers for Kasimir Bileski. It was great to hear from Myron, and to learn more about this artist. Myron brought along a sample of the stamp album cover work created by Szyk, and it was auctioned during the club meeting. An examples of Szyk's work can be seen at right. Although the attendance at the meeting was small due to torrential rains that day, members enjoyed the talk. Myron has graciously consented to providing us with another presentation about EUROPA stamps, which he considers his primary collecting interest.
Other Things We Collect.... Recently I visited on of our members (Marcia Meyers) who is/was our Vice President. Her husband, Arthur, also a member, have had difficulties in making our meetings, so she asked if someone could pick up some stamps she wanted to auction off. During the course of my visit with her, I happened to notice her interesting small collection of philatelic pins she has collected over the years.
How did you start stamp collecting? My father was a practicing engineer. As such, he was involved in a lot of projects in Iceland, and in Ethiopia, so he was getting regular interesting philatelic items from all of these places from his travels. He was born in 1920 and he wanted his children to collect stamps and baseball cards so we started when we were seven or eight. Do you still have covers from back in those days? “Yes. When my father was doing his travels, it was not uncommon for all the various airlines and trains to do first day covers for promotional things. He would get tons of covers from Eastern Airlines, Pan American Airlines, and all this sort of thing. He would get promotional materials from all of them - that has led to my real interest when we got to Connecticut – stamp and cover collecting and everything. He had collected all that stuff from his early days. You travelled a lot in your job? After I finished school so I took a financial and accounting job with the firm my father worked for because he had always wanted me to work for the same company he worked for. We spent 18 months in Atlanta, then we went up to Northern Virginia. And that’s how I got involved in construction, basically took an accounting and administrative position with this company and that’s what I finished my career with. During that period we did 4 years in Botswana and had projects in Egypt and Ethiopia and places like that which I went to but was not assigned. Finally in 1985 when after the fellow that hired my father died, the Swedish company Skanska bought the company and is now the primary focus of the Skanska US activities. And that’s how we came to accumulate the philatelic items we had through all these years. Do you have covers from every single place you’ve ever been? Not covers, but covers and postcards. The other thing is we have similar types of things from my father and my grandfather. Basically I have them in hundreds- all different albums. That is one of the things I am working with the Philatelic Society in trying to do- create a quick digital way to enable collectors to capture their “misppent youth”. “I am distressed by the fact that there is no easy way to get a binder that has an interchangeable cover and an interchangeable size to it. So all my stuff is all in different size binders different size covers “ So, you stopped collecting for a while and then you went back to it? Well, I never really collected things, I accumulated things. To me collecting is putting things together for a purpose. It changed when I did this chronicle for my cousin - Cliff [Gilmond] would have me buy stamps and covers that pertained to parts of our lives and everything and that was actually the change in my collecting. It was basically to chronicle the lives of what we had done, what our parents had done, and use both stamps and various philatelic items such as covers and First Day Covers. It is a memoir- I call it a chronicle.
John was born in Fort Worth Texas. He calls himself the tip of the baby boom. He went to the University of South Carolina, in 1960s. Prior to coming to Connecticut, he lived in Northern Virginia. John told me that “Connecticut is the nicest state we ever lived in and this area is the nicest area we have ever lived in." Because John and I talked for several hours, and because he talked about the First Day Covers he and Cliff Gilmond created together, I feel that a two part article is appropriate- the second part of the interview will appear next issue.
For some time now, I have been getting these enigmatic emails from John Withers. I asked club members if they knew him, and everyone just sort of shook their heads. John has not been at one of our meetings, and had not been seen at one of our shows, so we knew little about him or his collecting interests, other than he had recently joined the Philatelic Society. Curious, I contacted John recently, and asked him if he would like to do an interview.
One Man's View- An Interview with John Withers
Part Two of John's interview will be in the next issue. John tells us about how he and Cliff Gilmond created First Day Covers .
Every member in the Society is familiar with the "Chicken" stamp, and the fact that it had its first day of issue in New Haven. Recently, I came across several different covers made for the event, and noted some interesting things. The covers at right were produced by (top to bottom) Fleetwood, Andersen, Fluegel, C.W. George. Apparently, C.W. George produced many different variations of the cover, e.g. chicken facing left, facing right, green and black, brown and black, thermo-graphed, flat- at least 6 variations that I have seen. There were two different plates used that day, 23900 and 23903. Also, two different postmarks were used- the Fluegel cover has the small postmark while the plate block covers have the larger circle cancel. Perhaps the clerks were not sure if the smaller cancel would cover the stamps? The covers are marred with scotch tape- the bane of collectors. Years after the assiduous collector spent good money, the tape gum now is an ugly yellow stain, almost impossible to remove.
The Case of the Dreaded Imposter: A Review of the Sherlock Watermark Detector by O.J. Burns
There are some among us who might characterize the stamp-issuing powers of Argentina as thrifty for early on they saved countless pesos by using the same stamp designs over and over again. The stamps of the various printings might seem identical to one another but there are differences.
There are others who see the Argentinians
through a glass darkly; they see them creating a
cunning web meant to ensnare innocent philatelists
in a plot aimed to frustrate them to a point of
unmitigated madness. Therefore, these realists, as
they call themselves, would have us believe that the stamp producing
powers should be described less as thrifty and more as diabolically
sadistic. To be sure, some collectors circumvent these obstacles simply by avoiding such countries as Argentina, Brazil, Hungary and other or they content themselves by saving only one of the stamp designs. Others, of course, perceive the frugality ploy as a challenge; they pit themselves against their villainous adversary and collect each variety of the stamp in Sir Edmund Hillary's spirit of "because they are there." I am one of the latter group possessed of a blind determination, checking off each of the variants in the catalogue offers souls like me immense satisfaction. I recently decided to decrease my chances of madness by purchasing a Sherlock Watermark Detector, a device sold by Amos Press. Since one of the chief means of distinguishing one Argentinian twin or triplet from another is by discerning the designated watermark, such a piece of equipment promised to give me an advantage that might just stave off my muttering "The horror! The horror!" For years, I have submerged the hopefuls in my black, flat bottomed basin of detection. In some
cases the identification has been easy but there have been many more times I am left not knowing what stamp I have. In the case of Argentinian stamps, this happens all too frequently when I am seeking to distinguish #418-450 as compared to #485-500. The difference between the two series is the watermark. If viewed in the catalog, the differences in the rays and in the shape of the letters "RA" seem obvious. All too often the watermark is obscured by everything from cancellations to color to rough surfaces of the paper. When I saw the advertisement for Sherlock, I thought I had reached an early stage of heaven. Sherlock, after all, is a name that resonates in the world of detection, for Sherlock Holmes is the finest sleuth there is. I imagined all those hours of stress-free identification.
With Sherlock as my guide, I would blithely breeze through the now tedious stamp interrogations. My fellow philatelists would marvel at my skills. Think of my joy in finally outwitting those clever (diabolical?) Argentinian stamp makers! I read the ad descriptions and blurbs. I asked several collectors if they had heard of the Sherlock Watermark Detector, a name that fell from my mouth with thunderous gravitas as if I were James Earl Jones. Alas, no one had heard of the machine though they spoke of similar machines that had not fulfilled their product promises. But was it a Sherlock, I pressed; did it have the various shades of light to uncover the truth?
Continued on page 7 - The Case of the Dreaded Imposter
The annual THAMESPEX stamp bourse and exhibition was held at the Clarke Middle School in Waterford on October 21st, 2018. This annual event, sponsored by the Thames Stamp Club, featured several local dealers and several frames of exhibits. Dealer attendance was somewhat limited this year mainly due tp a competing show NOJEX/ASDA show the same weekend. USPS was present at the show, and attendees had the opportunity to not only buy stamps, but to bid on several auction lots in a silent auction held during the show hours. There were only two competitive exhibits at the show this year, reflecting the overall difficulty in getting members to exhibit their collections. At right, Thames president, Tony Bruno, won a Gold Medal for his exhibit about coils, while Mike Frechette won a Gold for his first time exhibit of Trains: A Philatelic Journey.
The Case of the Dreaded Imposter (continued from page 6) I was not dismayed, not even when the video person spent more time unwrapping the product and installing the batteries than he did in showing the machine's capabilities with watermark detecting. When the package was opened, a mild-mannered machine appeared. With a good deal of excitement, anxiety, and hope, I selected an Argentine stamp #427, which I had already watermarked and tentatively identified the old fashioned way, slipped a yellow brown Rivadavia beneath the lens, slid the lens into its appropriate slot, turned on the light and stared at .... the blank back of a stamp. I tried changing the color of the light shining upon it, hoping that such an adjustment would allow me to distinguish the crooked rays of watermark #90. No luck. I reread the directions, which suggested that tightening the screw at the back of the device would render the watermark more. I tightened the screw; still no luck. I tightened it a bit more and decided that the unclear image I was receiving must be due to a dirty lens so I buffed the lens with a microfiber cloth. I also decided to change the #427 stamp I had chosen and selected another from my pile. This time there was success! I could see the flat top of the "A" in "RA" as well as the crooked rays emanating from the watermark of the sun as clearly as I could recognize the silhouetted profile of Sherlock Holmes himself. I then changed the color of the light and was elated to see that some colors were considerably better in rendering a clear image. Encouraged, I returned to the first stamp but not before I gave it a bath in the watermark . Alas, Sherlock detected no watermark so I tried and tried again with one stamp and then another to see if the watermarks could be discerned ... or not. The result of this experiment was that in about a third of the cases, I could see the watermark clearly, sometimes better than when I watermarked it the old fashioned wet way. Would I be willing to spend the near three hundred dollar price tag for those verifying my previous wet detection results? Uhhhh, no. At that rate of return, I thought that taking the same amount of money and buying stamps was a much better deal. Sadly, I sent back my Sherlock Watermark Detector to Amos, who refunded the full cost of the device and paid return shipping. I included a note, as requested, claiming that the device fell short of Baker Street Standards. I told them that if they were disappointed in the package's being returned to their doorstep, they were no more crestfallen than I. Even if Sherlock's price were only fifty dollars, I would not have kept it nor endorsed it. I think that the detecting device's name is unfortunate for had the near infallible London detective been as unsuccessful in his career as his watermark detector namesake, the name Sherlock Holmes would long ago have passed like his pipe smoke .... into oblivion.
