Also This Month

(Read all these features in full in the June 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

Pacific Explorer - the first world stamp exhibition to get everything wrong

By Peter McBride

A NUMBER of established major dealers were heard to say that it was the worst international that they had ever attended, and that is in dealing careers spanning four or five decades. The city was wrong, the season was wrong, the weekend was wrong, the venue was wrong, the booth costs were the highest known, and the booth fittings - display units, lighting, etc - were abysmal.
The venue, the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, was the most expensive available in Sydney and which is in a tourist area, Darling Harbour, which few Sydneysiders would normally visit; the agents appointed for customs were unaware that there was no duty on stamps; only four days for an FIP International; the list is endless ...

WOULD THE TRADE SUPPORT A 2010 INTERNATIONAL STAMP EXHIBITION AT THE BUSINESS DESIGN CENTRE?
By Peter Jennings

IT appears that an ad hoc committee of interested parties has decided that the Business Design Centre in Islington, north London, is to be the venue of the 2010 international stamp exhibition. It is also proposed that Spring Stampex that year should be cancelled! ...
London has a distinguished and proud history of once-a-decade internationals at prestigious venues stretching back to 1950 at Grosvenor House in Park Lane. Would a controversial decision to hold 2010 at the BDC command the support of the majority of dedicated members of stamp trade at home or overseas? I think not, but what do you dealers think?