Polar Blog

Collecting life has sped up in the last 3 months since I wrote and I hope much of this is percolating down to all of you - local clubs restarting with guest speakers finally agreeing presentations, STAMPEX as major event, large regional postcard fair as well as exciting Auction material. I still find a few good Polar postcards at Fairs and especially used with comments about the exploits of Scott and Shackleton. These filtered down into subjects or geography through the amazing network of dealers we have who do work extremely hard lugging their boxes and albums around to these events all over the UK. Do support them as trust me we will miss them when they are gone! See the Scott card / message and famous scarce Scottish NAE piper and penguin! Recent classic Postal material from both Polar regions saw continued strong prices as there has been a dearth of such lately. Finally finally the 50th Anniversary of our sister Society the Falkland Islands Philatelic Study Group was celebrated in September with a special three-day get together. Including a fabulous day out and lunch at the SS GREAT BRITAIN Exhibition centre at her restored resting place in Bristol docks.

My overwhelming impression is of how brave the passengers were to travel- and how short judging by the size of the bunks they were expected to live in for weeks voyaging to Australia and America! An especial big thanks go to Peter Cranwell for a large donation of unused GB postage stamps to use on Polar Post despatched from England by Paul Jones and Simon Lealman. And the big message this issue is a massive thank you not just from me but the whole PPHSGB family for John’s incredible 25 years at the helm of Polar Post - and especially for the way he continually fits my ramblings and last minute articles and scans into a sensible and logical format! (p.s. I became a Great Uncle recently so life has become even busier and very worthwhile for the smiles I get!) Don’t forget to send articles or short notes space fillers to John.

CONGRATULATIONS TO JOHN YOULE ON 25 GREAT YEARS AS EDITOR OF POLAR POST!
We the Committee members wish to put on record our grateful thanks for his stalwart dedication to our Society on behalf of the membership.

The Polar Post has grown and evolved over his stewardship from plain print to colour covers and now full colour content. He was also involved in the nascent Website efforts. With negotiation for competitive cost, print and paper quality, postage costs and modern layout. With information gathering on voyages, members’ questions, stamp issues and tasteful In Memoriam for members
passing. All additional work not always realised. His overall knowledge and dedication should not be underestimated and is very much appreciated – Please carry on John as long as you can and ensure the standards are maintained.

A symbolic 3 cheers!

Hooray ! At last a real event - Midpex took place on the 3rd July and was quite well attended if not as busy as in normal times. Nonetheless being able to chat with others and visit dealer tables gave a good feeling. Food and drinks were available and tasty and all congratulations to the organisers for a great day out as far as I enjoyed it. Got a few items if nothing spectacular. I am jabbed and had extra tests all negative and everyone seemed to behave well and I did not feel uneasy at all- perhaps because mainly the older sensible generation!

We got at least one new member by the way. And sold lots of copies of the new booklets co-authored by our very own Treasurer, FRPSL and now scribe Professor Brian Clayton!(See information on Page 70).

A new spanner appears to again be hindering our attempts to run a Society auction due to HMRC and EU vat changes but our man Steve is on the case during a summer recess.

Apart from enjoying non-philatelic life in our new town centre ‘cafe culture’. I got some new cards of Antarctic ships with a new style printers cachet from the Nautical Photo Agency (see below). They were not marked up as postcards but of ships scenes not seen before. Stay safe everyone and please send more snippets or articles to John Youle.

Despite the continuing ‘Lockdown’ in UK and elsewhere in various forms and stages I found plenty to do with our hobby but oh what changes we are putting up with and adapting to in this brave New World!

The foreseeable future will see us all leading a very altered way of life and my first real taste was a Zoom meeting on 11th March over the ether with my aged laptop!

A special invite via the FIPSG/RPSL to listen in and contribute - for which many thanks again - to first a virtual chat room and then enjoy Kim Stuckey’s slide show of ‘Britain in Ice’ covering very interesting mail of early FIDS and TAE/IGY in particular. Some amazing high value postal rates including 10/= FIDS ship stamp correctly used as part of a large cover to the FIDASE HQ in UK. Contrasting with ½d from same set Christmas card rate which took a whole year to arrive from Argentine Island in 1961/62 to New Zealand!


I also continued to benefit from online auctions with a dozen extra Polar related items. Some of these may be on show at the much delayed FIPSG 50th Anniversary event in September- at last - cross fingers!


I managed to nearly balance sales and purchases in their auction just ended in April. I hope the results for Steve restarting our own and ending shortly as I write, will help to stimulate you our members to return to adding to your own collection. I treated myself to 2 special items as it was my birthday on 12th April! At Easter I sent about 100 electronic greetings to family friends and fellow collectors world wide and received a huge positive response which was both reassuring that in the main you are well and also working through this epidemic. This gives me another opportunity to thank our tireless Committee and ex officio members for keeping our Society on track and organised!


Finally RIP the Duke of Edinburgh who in 1957 visited some FID Bases and many of us have covers stamped around 2nd January or just after including Deception island following the old Royal Yacht Britannia sailing out to visit them escorted by HMS Protector. And he wrote a book called ‘Birds from Britannia’ - not seen a signed one on the market however.


I hope you all got the chocolate eggs you enjoy at Easter and please send more snippets or articles to John Youle - personally I especially enjoyed the ‘Visit to Amundsen house’ last issue.

I write this as a soft dusting of snow is gently falling over our town – but elsewhere I know enough has arrived for sledging down hillsides and blocking roads! Ours is gone by the morning.

At least it’s enough to put one in the collecting mood with a ‘real Polar’ type scene. Normally when I begin to write these notes I can check my diary for events, auctions, meetings, emails since the last Polar Post edition - but sign of our times there is very little. A few items in on line auction or eBay tries to keep me engaged. So I will start 2021 off with a Preview – Shackleton’s last voyage on the Quest started 100 years ago this year - this last fling to explore his life long love of the Antarctic. I will start a short résumé in future Polar Posts to fill in more details but an interesting Postcard MW OA-1-a, a line drawn The “QUEST” helps to set the scene, Figure 1.


If anyone would like an item included please let me know and I will try to incorporate it into the story - if so, subject to space I will ask you to scan direct to John Youle with or without your
name being acknowledged as owner, up to you if anonymity preferred. Especially any pre-departure items of Quest – not much about generally of this voyage in my experience. (The stamps ‘overprinted’ post his death excepted). I do have some interesting ephemera, signatures and photographs to include already.



On other matters, I enjoyed the sight of my regular annual Christmas correspondent Bent Sørensen’s items sent to the Editor - one of our oldest and active members proving you don’t
have to be “webbed up” to contribute! I hope he continues to extract good items from his ‘Fred Goldberg’ mine!

Finally, I found very interesting the ‘snippets’ by Phil Schreiber last issue. More members should share such news - it doesn’t always have to be a long article to interest members. I wish you all the best for this year and hope for chances of face-to-face meetings - even if at 2 metres!


Take care and stay safe – and send John Youle any good Polar philatelic stories.

Once again our Christmas issue is available and I wonder if I am alone looking back wondering where another year has gone? I know months of enforced hibernation because of the Covid epidemic didn’t help and I personally managed to get plenty of outside fresh air and work done – so I can’t compare to the winter months endured by my favourite Antarctic Expeditioners!

Talking of which the autumn sales of certain postcards sent from the early trips of 1900s fetched strong prices following on from some earlier results from the Scott / SS Discovery Expedition. Amazing changes since Harry Evans sale in 2014! I illustrate just one from my own collection which has details about activity making it ever so much more interesting (a ‘below decks’ member, Blissett but desirable for all that).

Another card from the Grosvenor sale I would like to refer to is from the British Graham Land Expedition of 1936 Heyburn AQ-11-aqv written by Brian Roberts Ornithologist while invalided to Port Stanley for an Appendix operation. Its discovery was by me in an unremarkable modern album of aerial views of the Falklands and air letters at a Harmers’ sale – you remember those? As it lay outside my main areas of interest I sold it at Grosvenor for over £4000 and it has graced a couple of big Falkland and Polar collections over the years since – and will do so again at £5,800 before fees! The use of Falkland stamps on many of the mentioned items pushes up competition! It is one of very few mail items from the BGLE. Reference my previous message and Shackleton used card – thanks to John for his translation which helps identify the position within the European tour.

I wish you all the best for the holiday season and trust we can have more activity for our hobby face to face in 2021 - even if at 2 metres!

Take care and stay safe – and send John Youle any good Polar philatelic stories and support our popular online auction with Steve Allen to add to your own interests.