IN MY VIEW - Otto Hornung

Big changes at the Academy

THE annual general meeting of the European Academy of Philately (AEP) was held in the prestigious hall of the ancient Society for Hunting and Game in Paris on February 5 2005. It was a very important event in the history of the Academy, which was foun¬ded in 1978. The president, Jean-Pierre Mangin has been in the chair for five years, but as the president is elected for three years and can serve only two terms he has one more year to go, and is making an effort to put the Academy onto a stronger footing.
In his report to the AGM Jean-Pierre Mangin mentioned that since he had become president the membership of the AEP has almost quadrupled from 70 members to 271!
What is even more important, whilst five years ago only seven countries from western Europe were represented in the AEP. Now, 37 European coun¬tries are represented, and also some outside Europe. The UK is represented by 20 members including some dealers ...

(Read the entire column in the March 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

GB COLUMN by James Skinner

Feeling the heat

DESPITE having moved from a loss- to a profit-making position in recent months, Royal Mail is far from being out of the woods. With the mail carrying market already partially deregulated, RM's major profit base is under attack from other large firms, eager to gain a slice of what is indubitably a very lucrative pie. The area in question is the corporate mail market – a significant profit centre, which helps offset the higher costs of delivering the mail posted by small to medium sized businesses and the general public.
One of the latest companies to muscle in on what was previously a Royal Mail monopoly is TNT Mail, part of the TPG group, which also owns the Dutch Post Office ...

(Read the entire column in the March 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

USA by Les Winick

Condition confusion

Catalogues set different standards
THERE is a major marketing problem for every USA philatelic auction firm and/or dealer who sells outside of the USA which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been addressed.
As we all know, there are many catalogues for the dealer and collector to use as a reference guide. Most agree on catalogue numbers and year of issue. However, there is an area where the catalogue used in the United States, Scott, has a definite important variation for certain nomenclature from that of other worldwide catalogues ...

Internet trading causing concern
I recently attended an American Stamp Dealers Association (ASDA) meeting in Florida that was devoted to the state of the philatelic market and ways that dealers can promote the hobby ... The discussion quickly focused on the huge amount of buying and selling via the Internet and ways to promote the hobby via the computer. Since several of the dealers present had a major presence in the electronic medium, it was an interesting discussion since there were knowledgeable people present, who knew the pluses and minuses of this medium.
The majority of complaints from buyers was that their stamps were not as described ...

(Read the entire column in the March 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

EUROPE by Albert Boerma

Austrian innovations stem the slump

'Holiday' overprints
IN January and February 2005 Austrian Post reissued eight stamps from the series 'Holidays in Austria' (2002/2003) that had been creatively overprinted with a line illustration and new value (€55c). 'Postinformation' warned that the "The method of printing means that there may be significant differences in the positioning of the overprints" ...

Crystal stamps were handmade
Sometimes it pays off to let it be widely known that you're a philatelist. Just before Christmas a distant relative who had visited her country of birth bought me a holiday souvenir from Vienna: an original Swarovski Crystal stamp sheet. It was a real surprise because the lady herself does not collect stamps. Austrian Post must have conducted a very successful campaign to attract the public's attention to these special stamps ...

(Read the entire column in the March 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

AUSTRALASIA by Glen Stephens

Big prices for Australian locals

READERS of my column will have noted the huge price rises many of the Australian early issues have experienced in recent years. Many key Kangaroo and KGV issues of course are prominent among these stories.
However, I have noticed that some surprising price rises have occurred in Australian connected locals and Cinderella type issues - especially the older ones ...

(Read the entire column in the March 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

POSTCARD WORLD by Liz McKernan

THE FRENCH COLLECTION

Against all odds!
THE two major Paris postcard fairs this year took place on consecutive weekends. Claire Mathis, co-organiser of Cartexpo, told me she was extremely annoyed that Numicarta was the following weekend; however, for foreign visiting
dealers such as myself the two fairs provided a wonderful excuse for a prolonged stay in Paris. Over a ten-day period I succeeded in spending six of them attending either postcard or collectors' fairs ...

(Read the entire column in the March 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

NEW BOOKS by David Rennie

Reviewed this month.

(Read the entire column in the March 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

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