News

• Stephen says
• NZPF Awards
• Club news
• International and National Exhibition Reports

Stephen says –

Welcome to this January newsletter – the first of 2021.  Another year gone and many would say good riddance.  2020 was all about the virus, and we are all looking forward to 2021 which we hope can only be better. We are very lucky in NZ compare with most of the rest of the world.  Many of us are little affected with what is happening around the world, but it is difficult to travel overseas. So, instead off travelling overseas a lot of the surplus money is been spent on new cars, fixing up the house and hobbies.

Covid 19 – Mail

Many postal administrations are back up and running, so my purchases from overseas are not taking the months to arrive in NZ they were a few months ago.  But, with the restrictions in flights resulting from Covid-19, mail to and from New Zealand continues to be disrupted.  The New Zealand Post website – https://www.nzpost.co.nz/contact-support/international-delivery-updates is regularly updated.  This shows mail is being sent by sea to a number of countries and service is still not available to some 49 countries at the time I write this.

Covid 19 – Stamp trade

Having attended a couple of stamp auctions in the later part of last year, I saw how popular our hobby still is, with good attendances and strong bidding.  Also, the roaring trade dealers appeared to do over the lockdown period hasn’t really showed down much with some stamp accessorises still in short supply.

Society meetings

It appears society meetings are pretty well back to normal with visiting speakers now able to travel around again.  Some […]

• Stephen says
• My view of NZ2020 – Andrew McNiven
• Covid-19
• Club news
• National and International Exhibition Reports

Stephen says –

Welcome to this first newsletter of 2020.  Time has really gone quickly, and we are now three-quarters through the year.  I hope you are all well and the virus and lockdown has not had too much effect on you.

First, I must apologise for the delay in getting this newsletter out since our previous one in 2019.  Some of us on Federation got heavily involved with the NZ2020 international exhibition and, the closer the exhibition got, it absorbed a lot of any spare time we had.  With the cancellation of the international part of the exhibition and the early finishing of the re-arranged National exhibition, a lot of wind was taken out of our sails and trying to do all the tidy up afterwards some Federation duties took a back step.  However, we are now back into it.  I am sure things will get back on track now that NZ2020 is behind us and look forward to what we can achieve in the future.

With this newsletter I would like to welcome Andrew McNiven as the new NZPF newsletter editor working closely with the secretary.

Covid 19

To begin with, the virus seemed to be mainly an overseas problem until it hit our shores in March.  Our borders were closed one week before the NZ2020 exhibition.  If the exhibition had been held a week earlier thing may well have been different.

With the subsequent lockdown and travel put on hold suddenly people had a lot of spare time.  Even though I was able to continue working from home, not having to travel to work every day meant I had over an […]

Stephen says –

Welcome to this second newsletter of 2019, time seems to be going really quickly.

Exhibitions
It’s a shame there isn’t a national exhibition in New Zealand this year as I find they are a great place to catch up with fellow collectors with many overseas exhibitors also find our exhibitions an excuse to visit New Zealand.  Many of us around the country are busy putting our energy into preparations for the upcoming NZ2020 international exhibition in Auckland next March.  Once this is event is over I understand a couple of clubs will start planning for half- or full-national exhibitions in the coming years.

Since the previous newsletter I’ve had the opportunity to visit International exhibitions in Singapore and China.  The FIAP exhibition in Singapore was a similar size to that being planned for NZ2020 and it gave me and other New Zealand visitors a chance to review the layout and planning.  There were a few things we hadn’t thought of and also some different ways of doing things we had planned; these will be put in place for NZ2020.  There was a good number of dealers and plenty of visitors at the show – an advantage with Singapore being a major Asian transport hub with tens of 1,000s travelling through each day.

The China FIP exhibition was the largest I have visited with something like 3,500 frames of competition material and another 1,000 frames of display material.  The hall area was huge with well over a 100 postal administration and dealer stands.  The trouble for me was there were few overseas dealers and I couldn’t find much to buy.  What did surprise me was the large number of people looking at the exhibits – especially the Chinese […]