IN MY VIEW - Otto Hornung

'Le Fin' for French franc frankings?

AN old problem is raising its head in France. L'Écho de la Timbrologie published in its May 2005 number a long and interesting article by Claude Jamet about suggestions to demonetise French stamps with face values in francs.
This needs explaining: the French problem is that at the time of past currency reforms only coins and banknotes were affected, not postage stamps. The first major currency reform in France happened on January 1 1960. This was a fairly straightforward simple operation as the rate of conversion was one new franc to 100 old francs.
The old francs, however, did not fade away so quickly. I remember visiting Paris in 1964, where in some shops they still had prices both in new and old francs, and people still counted in the old currency ...

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

GB COLUMN by James Skinner

Miniature mystery

ALTHOUGH I pride myself on my understanding of the modern GB scene, I hope I would never be so presumptuous as to assume that I know all there is to know. I was recently ... shown a miniature sheet of which I was previously totally unaware. This is a sheet that was on sale from Royal Mail for the statutory year, yet I never even caught a faintest whiff of its existence until I was shown a copy by one of our best known GB dealers!
In my last column I talked about the shortage of supply of the familiar Classic Locomotives miniature sheet issued in January of last year, featuring all six stamps from the set. However, at the time I didn’t know about a second sheet for this issue which appears to be much rarer ...

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

USA by Les Winick

A tragedy for philately

PACIFIC Explorer 2005 took place in Sydney from April 21 to April 24 2005.
That place and date will remain in philately forever as a disaster that negatively affected the hobby. The tragedy in Australia, and it was a tragedy, will affect the thinking of every postal administration in the world where consideration for a stamp exhibition is being planned. It does not matter that the fault may not principally lie with Australia Post (AP), the fact remains that AP sponsored the event and it was a failure. A big-time flop, costing lots of money and wasted time for everyone ...

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

POSTCARD WORLD by Liz McKernan

Pastures new on the coast

A NEW venue for a fair is always an unknown quantity for both the organiser and the dealers who are brave enough to attend. Some dealers prefer to visit a new fair as customers in order to see for themselves the important factors such as parking facilities, lighting, refreshments offered, table spacing, and perhaps the most important of all - loading access and attendance.
Others are confident that a first fair anywhere will always be well attended by collectors curious to see for themselves which dealers have turned up.

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

NEW BOOKS by David Rennie

All reviewed in the June 2005 Philatelic Exporter.

EUROPE by Albert Boerma

Enschedé cuts production and staff
DUTCH security printer Joh Enschedé has been forced to lay-off 100 of its 300 employees in its banknote division. The printer is under pressure from competition by the state printing houses of Europe ...

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

REVIEW by Glen Stephens

The Book of The Stamp

A RATHER superb new book landed on my desk in late April.
Printed in Sweden, it is titled The Treskilling Yellow and is, of course, about the famous Swedish stamp of that name, supposedly 'The Most Valuable Thing In The World'.
It is a very heavy hardbound book with a large, square page size, and weighs in at 1.5kg. Heavy grade gloss paper and 186 pages make this the ultimate coffee table book for any stamp collector or dealer ...

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

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