Telephone (01344) 774155 23,
Crowthorne,
Berks.
RG45 6QZ
Next club meeting Monday 4th June 2018.
·
Subject - Annual General
Meeting and Display Competition
Monday 3rd July 2018.
- Subject - “The Coins of the First Twelve
Caesars” by Derek Aldred
Tuesday 1st August 2018.
- Subject - Summer trip TBC
The club's AGM and
Annual display Competition for the Michael Broome Cup is the meeting where the
officer's report the status of the club and the membership voice their
concerns/ideas. It is also the time where the club committee is elected for the
forthcoming year.
As
last year,with this
newsletter is a single Committee Report with contributions from all the
officers and the AGM agenda, the financial balance sheet and the 2017 AGM
minutes. We will not be repeating the content verbatim at the meeting. After
the formalities, the agenda points that the Committee requires membership
feedback will be discussed. Then there will be the opportunity for members to
raise any issues, so please take time to read the report and gather your
thoughts prior to the meeting. The election of officers will follow.
If
you are willing to stand for election to the Committee please contact the
chairman or the secretary at the number at the top of this newsletter.
The second part of
the evening will be devoted to the annual display competition, with the winner
being awarded the Michael Broome Memorial Trophy for 1 year. Please bear in
mind that all the displays should be treated respectfully, these are members
own pieces and all should be handled carefully. The
competition is open to all members and can cover any topic connected to
numismatics. So to all members please have a go and
enter a display.
There may be some
limited time available at the end of the meeting for dealing but please note
that the time before the start of the meeting is for members to look at the
Displays and perhaps renew their memberships. Please note that particular care
should be taken when handling any part of the displays as these are from
member’s personal collections and not items for sale.
Meetings are held
at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, commencing at 7.00 p.m.
May Meeting
Garry was welcomed back to the Club, this time to talk about Postal Orders. His collection started when he found a 1/- postal order in an ephemera box, which brought back fond memories of earlier days, not to mention literary works, such as in The Wilmslow Boy and the Billy Bunter sagas! Although a niche collecting hobby, there is a lot of collector interest. Postal Orders (POs) are still available, up to £250, printed on demand. There is a PO society and some good publications.
POs were introduced to meet a ‘how do you pay’ problem
first arising in mid-Victorian times. Settlement for low value goods and
services from a non-local supplier was traditionally done by sending your
trusted servant with a bag of coins, and there were some private enterprises
that would delivery money for a fee. Neither of these was sufficient
for the burgeoning consumer markets. Early attempts for a poundage-based system
failed to make money. By Act of Parliament in 1881, poundage was set and control vested in the General Post Office – each
issuing post office had its own number and individual POs were numbered
sequentially. So popular was this service that within 10 years, some 24 million
Orders were issued.
The security was akin to the production and control of
bank notes, including watermarks. In 1903, the counterfoil was added and the
description ‘British Postal Order’ added in 1905. The design changed slightly
over time and POs remained quickly identifiable. A potential shortage of
coinage in both World Wars led to POs being available as legal tender, with their
counterfoils guillotined off. Further developments, including the use of
optical sorting codes in 1957, Dual currency (pre-decimal) varieties were
issued in 1970-71.
The scheme was widely copied,
especially in British colonial territories, sometimes by overprinting British POs. The logistics of production and control of POs led to
some brilliant technological developments in The General Post Office’s
workshops, dealing inter alia with the 100 million POs issued in peak years.
The survivors are comparatively few, of the two billion plus issued, an
estimated one million survive. Counterfoils are rare, often being used as
cigarette paper!
Mysteries remain, for example, the role of Lady
Willoughby de Broke in designing the mechanics of the PO system in the early
1870s. She was known to have played a major part but so far
the proof has been elusive.
Garry’s talk was illustrated by POs taken from his own collection and by items from Club members, with a special display by Michael Gouby. He was thanked for his interesting talk and, now a regular contributor, members look forward to his next visit.
Future Events.
·
London Coin Fair at Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury 2nd
June
·
Midland Coin Fair – National Motorcycle Museum 10th
June
Past Events
·
10 years ago Michael Gouby had to fill in for a missing speaker,
giving a two part talk on websites and varieties
·
20 years ago in May 1998 John
Kent gave a talk on “The Coins of Roman Britain – for the Curious and the
Collector”
Club
Secretary.