Chairman’s evening 2023 and long haul flights across the Atlantic

For the final meeting of 2023, we were treated to two speakers, both of whom had material only available on long-haul flights.

The first speaker was Nick Rolfe who showed us areas of his Seahorses on cover collection that don’t normally get seen, as they sit outside of the main displays and their routes and destinations are slightly rarer in many cases. Because of this, we saw examples of seahorse stamp usage on airmail covers to Java, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, and Nauru to name a few. The images below show some of the covers and the routes they would have taken.

After the break, the second speaker was Jonathan Guy who showed two areas of Barbados philately; the first was the use of the keyplate issue (1882-86) on cover, including examples of most of the values up to one shilling. The second area was the short-lived but philatelically interesting year of the West Indies Federation stamps, which lasted from 1958-59. The display included usage of each of the values on cover, stamps and plate blocks, and the known First Day Cover designs for this issue.

These displays rounded off a fascinating year for the society and we look forward to the Annual party in the New Year.