Stamp on organized philately

 

 

125th anniversary of organized philately in Luxembourg

Date of Issue : 3 March 2015

Luxembourg Post has released a special stamp on occasion of the 125th anniversary of organized philately. The stamp was issued on the 3rd of March.

On Palm Sunday, 30 March 1890, five young collectors, Joseph Schock, J. Faber, Jean-Charles Kohn, Jean Hellinckx and Michel Goebel, met at the Kiffer Café in the train station district of Luxembourg-City to found a philately society, the “Union des Timbrophiles de Luxembourg”, the first philately society in Luxembourg.

In 1934, the “Union des Timbrophiles de Luxembourg” was one of the four founding societies of the “Fédération des Sociétés Philatéliques” of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (FSPL) which celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2014.

Club News

Bletchley Park Post Office to close

Britain’s secret little post office is to close at the end of March. The undercover mailroom of the Enigma code breakers during the Second World War became a post office in 1947. Then Bletchley Park’s first gift shop when it opened to the public in 1994. In 2012 it was refurbished and officially opened by the keeper of the Royal Philatelic Collection. But new management at Bletchley Park have decided it is no longer “core to the code breaking story”. It is the last of the private collections to leave Bletchley Park.

The limited edition first day covers for new stamp issues it produced helped in keeping Bletchley Park open in those early days. Many have become worth several hundred pounds GBP and sought after by collectors around the world. They became known as “little pieces of art and history” due to the beautiful artwork that combined with new stamp issues to tell the story of Bletchley Park.

Now that no more issues will bear the “Bletchley Park Post Office” postmark those collections could increase significantly in value. The few remaining cover and stamp issues are already being snapped by collectors and visitors whilst still available. The entire collection can be viewed at the bletchleycovers.com website.

- Terry Mitchell

Stamp donation : to save a child’s life

 

Here is  interesting information concerning stamps and stamp collecting. Who could only imagine that a pile of stamps helped to support a child with a serious illness? Thousands of stamps have poured in after a couple put out an appeal to help collect as many as possible to raise money to find a cure for their daughter’s rare genetic disease.

Carly and Paul Hadman set up stamp collection boxes in banks and shops across the Fens as part of an appeal to raise awareness and funds to find a cure for Late Infantile Batten Disease which their daughter Effie was diagnosed with last year.

Her mum Carly, of Whittlesey, thanked everybody for the response which she said had been amazing.Effie was a bright, bubbly girl until for no apparent reason she suddenly forgot all of her numbers, colours and people’s names. She then started suffering seizures.

Mrs Hadman said: “We thought she had epilepsy but in January 2014, when Effie was three and a half, we received the devastating news that she has Late Infantile Batten Disease which has a life expectancy of five to 12 years old”.

Carly and her husband Paul are carriers for the rare disorder. The one ray of light is that their one year old son George does not have the disease ‒ he was six weeks old when they discovered Effie was terminally ill.

Batten disease is a fatal, inherited disorder of the nervous system, in which previously normal children develop vision problems or seizures. At the moment, there is no treatment and no cure for Batten disease.