06 February 2012
The following nominations have been lodged for the FIP Postal History Bureau Elections to be held in Jakarta in June 2012
For Chairman: JJ Danielski (Canada) and Kurt Kimmel (Switzerland)
For Secretary: Andrew Cheung (Hong Kong)
For Bureau Member (FIAP) : Patrick Flanagan (South Africa)
For Bureau Member (FIAF): A. Schlichter (Argentina) and Aldo Samame (Peru)
For Bureau Member (FEPA): D. Czirok (Hungary), Chris King (UK) and Per F. Mortensen (Denmark)
19 December 2011
The nomination form for the FIP Postal History Bureau elections to be held in Jakarta in June 2012 is attached for download. The form relating to any nomination a National Federation wishes to make for a Bureau position has to be returned duly signed by the nominated delegate and the National Federation before 20 January 2012
2012 Bureau Elections Nomination form (61Kb)
21 November 2011
Presenters Malcolm Groom & Dr Andrew Cheung with Group discussion leaders Norman Banfield (New Zealand) and Gary Brown (Australia)
Dr Andrew Cheung and Malcolm Groom with one of the 64 attendees
Discussing a class 2C exhibit with Mannan Mashur Zarif, Commissioner for Bangladesh and Postal history exhibitor.
A successful seminar of two hours was presented to 64 attendees in Wuxi during China 2011, the 27th Asian International Exhibition. The seminar was prepared by Dr Andrew Cheung in English and Chinese and presented by Malcolm Groom. Andrew presented additional comments to the many Chinese attendees. The seminar was based on the Streamlined seminars with the opportunity taken of spending time in front of the frames to discuss the points made during the seminar in a more practical setting. Members of the seminar were able to move through the frames with team leaders and experienced postal history exhibitors and judges Norman Banfield and Gary Brown as well as Andrew Cheung and Malcolm Groom. This enabled a very useful session for exhibitors to better understand the points made during the Powerpoint presentation.
Thanks are extended to the China 2011 Organising Committee for the excellent facilities provided and to the many attendees for their interest shown.
12 September 2011
11 September 2011
17 June 2011
16 June 2011
6 June 2011
2010 Postal History Bureau Activity Report (209Kb)
6 June 2011
6 June 2011
Lisbon Meeting Minutes (102Kb)
26 May 2011
References page
A comprehensive listing of references for South Australia have been added to the page courtesy of AD Presgrave of Goolwa, South Australia.
25 May 2011
Cover Watch
New covers posted under Ceylon and Switzerland
23 May 2011
SS3 Seminar held in Delhi during Indipex 2011.
On Feb 17, 2011, in New Delhi an international audience of over 40 participants listen to FIP Vice President Dr Peter McCann giving our SS3 (Streamlined Seminar "How to win a Gold medal in Postal History"). FIP Vicepresident Surajit Gongvatana assists to solve the technical problem of having a screen but no projector in the room.
21 May 2011
SS2 FIP Judging Seminar has been revised in May 2011.
As this Seminar serves as a qualification seminar for future FIP jurors it can only be given by a few elected members of the FIP Commission for Postal History. Any Federation interested in organizing such a Judging Seminar should contact Peter McCann and Kurt Kimmel.
24 January 2011
SS3 Seminar held in Istanbul
The updated version of SS3 "How to win a gold medal in Postal history" was presented by Kurt Kimmel in Istanbul on December 10 2010 with translations into Turkish by Alan Mellaart.
Many interesting questions were asked from among the 42 attending coming from Bulgaria, England, Germany, Greece, Pakistan and Turkey.
12 January 2011
Minutes of the FIP Postal History Commission meeting held in Lisbon on October 7 2010
Minutes of Lisbon meeting (100 Kb)
26 September 2010
The amended Streamlines Seminar SS3 has been added under Seminars & Exhibits/Streamlined Seminars
11 August 2010
NOTE AMENDED TIMES AND VENUES - FIP Postal History Commission meeting in Lisbon
The Commission Meeting will now be held on the same day, Thursday, October 7, 2010 from 10.45 to 12.45 at the World Philatelic Exhibition, Lisbon Congress Centre Auditorio 3
The Bureau Meeting will now be held in the afternoon of Thursday, October 7, 2010 from 14.30 to 16.00 in the same venue.
09 July 2010
FIP Postal History Commission meeting in Lisbon
The Commission meeting is to be held during Portugal 2010 on October 7th 2010 from 08.30AM to 10.30AM.
The invitation to delegates is found at this link Lisbon Invitation & Agenda
08 July 2010
Philapedia website launched at London 2010
A new postal history reference site was launched during London 2010. A link has been added to our website at the LINKS page. The Commission are pleased to support this site through this link.
Further information can be obtained by contacting yoav@philapedia.com
08 July 2010
FIP Postal History Bureau 2010 Interim Annual Report to FIP Board
2010 Interim Annual Report (88 Kb)
30 June 2010
The Streamlines Seminars available as downloadable files are currently under review to ensure they accurately reflect the GREV's in terminology. The updated files will replace those currently on the website as soon as they are available.
15 June 2010
The Postal History Seminar held by Dr Peter McCann during the London 2010 Festival of Stamps was a great success with 54 participants. Eleven attendees took the examination and eight successfully passed. Details of the seminar attendances have been sent to the FIP Secretary.
Peter McCann during his FIP Postal History seminar presentation at London 2010.
02 May 2010
April 24, 2010: Klaus Weiss (right) and Arnim Knapp (middle), President and Vice President of the DASV (German Postal History Society) honour our Chairman Kurt Kimmel with the Prof. Weidlich medal which is the highest award in Germany for promoting Postal History
17 February 2010
19 November 2009
Pictured after the Rome Board meeting are from left: Per Friis Mortensen, Danforth Walker, Kurt Kimmel & Andrew Cheung. The meeting was condensed as a result of Jury work and the Minutes of the Meeting prepared by Secretary J.J. Danielski are attached below as a PDF.
Photograph by Carol Cheung, Hong Kong.
Minutes of the Board Meeting.
18 October 2009
(The responses from the Postal History Commission are included in BOLD letters in this report.)
Melbourne class 2C report (229kb)
09 September 2009
Malmo Seminar report (119kb)Due to the condensation of the report to 25 pages, some of the opinions or ideas have been distorted or misused, e.g. the following conclusions are wrong:
"Top exhibitors identify presentation as a component of treatment" - This is wrong because we only have five points for presentation and it would be a mistake to shift some of these few points to treatment; furthermore we should avoid double penalties.
"Top exhibitors refer to items when they speak of importance" - In fact nobody has been asked to speak about evaluating Importance which would be a very interesting task on its own for a Seminar. All the speakers who had to present one exhibit had been asked to speak about "their most important items in the exhibit and why?". Therefore it is obvious that we had to speak about important items and not about the importance of each exhibit in relation to the Postal History of the World.
Nevertheless, everybody agreed that this Seminar had been very well organized and was worthwhile attending.
Kurt Kimmel
Chairman
18 August 2009
An attendance form has been developed to record the names of all attending Postal History seminars conducted at FIP, Continental, National & Local level. For FIP qualified jury members & prospective Postal History judges it is important that your attendance at the recognised seminars is recorded on this form & the completed form is sent by the seminar convenor to the Chairman of the Postal History Commission. Please download the PDF version of the attendance form in the Seminars & Exhibits section.
2 June 2009
The Sofia Postal History judging team at work: Mehmet Akan (Turkey), German Baschwitz (Spain), Moti Kremener (Israel) and Kurt Kimmel (Team Leader)
FIP Board Submission on Jury Matters from the FIP Commission for Postal history
26 November 2008
Suggestions for next FIP Board Meeting
1. New division of Traditional and Postal History exhibits
All the Operating Committees for exhibitions (FIP, Continental and National) should consider that after 1.1.2009 the Traditional and Postal History exhibits shall no longer be grouped by Continents but both classes should be grouped by the same three time periods (1. up to 1875, 2. 1875-1945, 3. after 1945). If there are not enough exhibits for the period after 1945 these exhibits should be judged by the team judging the 1875-1945 exhibits; not by the team judging exhibits up to 1875. This recommendation is made in order to give more modern exhibits a fair chance for a good award.
Postal History has three sub-classes A, B, C as per the new SREVes approved at the FIP Congress in Bucharest. Postal History sub-class A, B, and C exhibits should be grouped so that the Jury can compare them with similar exhibits e.g. all the Marcophily exhibits (sub-class B) of the time period up to 1875 should be grouped together and not mixed with Rates and Routes exhibits (sub-class A) or Historical and Social exhibits (sub-class C).
The One Frame Postal History exhibits should be exhibited together with the Multiframe Postal History exhibits of the three time periods and judged by the Postal History Jury. Obviously this should be done also in the other classes. A „One Frame Jury“ judging all the classes is not suitable because no Juror can cope with such an immense scope of knowledge required to judge all classes and time periods of exhibits at a world exhibition. The wrong results in the One Frame class in Singapore 2004 and other exhibitions prove this.
2. How to improve the judging of Postal History (and other classes)
Unfortunately the jury procedures have deteriorated during the last decade. This results from shorter exhibitions, late distribution of judging preparation material, no quality control, wrong selection of Grand Prix candidates, accepting unqualified exhibits, and not enough time to judge the qualified exhibits. On the other hand, too much time is wasted with a few Grand Prix candidates, lengthy and boring Palmares procedures, etc.
a) Best of Class/sub-Class (=Best of Class Prix if at least 10 exhibits in a Class or sub-Class) should be introduced instead of the traditional time-consuming Grand Prix which make only two or three people happy but disappoint many! The present system encourages the Traditional jurors vote for a traditional exhibit, the Postal History jurors for a Postal History exhibit, the Thematic jurors for a thematic exhibit and the presentations exert an influence on some jurors with the result that the best exhibit does not win. The best Traditional should get a Best of Class Prix and the best Postal History should get a Best of Class Prix and the best Thematic should get a Best of Class Prix, etc. Only jurors of the class concerned should be allowed to vote. Open instead of secret voting would not only save time but also improve the correctness of the Best of Class Prix and shorten Palmares procedures. The number of Grand Prix could be reduced to one, only the Grand Prix of the Exhibition if there is a Champion-Class.
b) Exhibitions with over 100 Postal History exhibits (including the Postal History one frame exhibits) should have a Vice-President of the Jury who is not a Team Leader so that he has time to look at all the 100+ exhibits with the goal to harmonize the different Jury teams and avoid mistakes. Obviously that should be done also for the other classes if these have over 100 exhibits (including one frames which require nearly as much work and time as a well-known eight frame exhibit; some One Frame exhibits are as difficult to judge as a new five frame exhibit!)
c) Exhibitors should give more information to the jurors at the time they submit an application so that jurors can prepare better. Instead of many „synopsis“ pages or no synopsis pages, every exhibitor should fill out a one page information form in addition to sending a copy of the title page and application so that the Operating Committees have better information for their selection of exhibits for the show. The information form should contain:
- additional subject background information that is not stated on the title page (about 6-8 lines)
- important and rare items which are present in the exhibit (8-12 items)
- important items added and main changes since the last exhibition (4-6 items or lines)
- personal research and study? (3-4 lines)
- publications by the exhibitor on the subject being shown (3-4 lines)
- reference literature (which is only necessary if this is not mentioned on the title page)
The majority in our Commission is in favour of a pre-printed form with these topics so that the exhibitors are told what information the Jury wants to have in advance of the exhibition. As this form should be sent with the application, the Operating Committees could use it as a valid reason not to accept those exhibits sent without the title page and the additional information form. The Commissioners should be obliged to cooperate with the Operating Committees to require from the exhibitor an application, copy of the title page and the additional information form. Actually it would be much better to not accept exhibits lacking one of these documents versus the present system of not accepting qualified exhibits without giving a reason. This rejection without giving a reason is very frustrating for many exhibitors as it has happened to specific exhibitors again and again.
d) The Jury Secretary distributes the list of the Jury teams, the time table and list of exhibits to be judged to the appointed team leaders at least three months before the opening of the exhibition. Each juror should receive the title page and a filled out information form (as outlined in 2c) of each exhibit he has to judge at least two months before the opening of the exhibition so that he can prepare (get literature from the library, etc.). If a juror receives the title page and additional information form only a few weeks before the exhibition, it will be too late to get literature to prepare properly. We have to consider that it might be that some jurors are on a business trip or have left for a holiday combining it with the exhibition. It is the responsibility of the President of a Jury to make sure that his Secretary makes these distributions in a timely manner.
e) The amount of exhibits per team and when the teams can start to work on the exhibits determines how much time the team has to complete its work. The most efficient procedure is if all the exhibits are in the frames 36 hours before the show opens and the Jury can start judging 24 hours before the show opens and has at least 12 working hours to judge before the public is allowed to be at the frames. It is the responsibility of the Coordinator to make sure that the jury has this additional early judging time and that the exhibits are grouped properly (as explained in 1. above) so that a Jury team does not have to seek out exhibits in three different places as we had to do it in Vienna. In Bucharest the FIP Coordinator did not allow the Jury to start working the day before the opening although 80% of the exhibits were in the frame. On the other hand the Secretary of the Jury wanted to have the results before all the exhibits were in the frames! With the improved procedures recommended here the jury can do a proper job of judging the exhibits with less jurors and it leaves enough time to cross check the exhibits. Sometimes cross checking has to be done in less than one hour which is impossible especially if exhibits are in various rooms, buildings or even tents like in Spain and/or if they are not properly numbered so that one needs more time to find them than to look at them. The combined knowledge of all the jurors can only be maximized if the jurors have time to see and compare all the other exhibits before voting!! It does not help much if we see the wrong judgements after the Palmares.-
f) Some quality control must be introduced so that unprepared and incompetent jurors can be eliminated in a fair procedure. Only if three different Team Leaders have stated such shortcomings of a specific juror should the juror be deleted from the FIP list. The reports of the Team Leaders should go to the FIP Coordinator in charge of „Jury matters“ who informs the FIP Coordinator and the Chairman of that class who in addition should survey the Team Leaders of his class and report to his FIP Coordinator. We used to have a similar system and it was a mistake to stop it. Although it sounds nice that we judge in teams and decisions have been made unanimously, we all know that this is not true and that in fact our judging procedures have become rather irresponsible considering that each exhibitor spends many hours if not his life-time and a lot of money to build his exhibit. It should be normal procedure that the FIP Board member in charge of a particular class coordinates with the Chairman of the FIP Commission for that class (who usually knows the jurors of their class better than anyone else) in order to weed out the incompetent jurors and have the best possible jurors judging exhibits. This is very important because incompetent jurors are detrimental to our hobby especially to those who have risen to the highest level. It takes decades for a collector to reach the highest level but only minutes by an arrogant judge to destroy it. We have to do what we can do to encourage such exhibitors instead of allowing incompetent jurors to frustrate them.- On the other hand it has to be a fair and positive procedure so that the accused juror will be informed and shall be given an opportunity to explain the situation. The aim should be that he gets a chance to improve.
Hoping that I have considered all the propositions received from our Bureau members – at least as far as possible – we kindly ask for a written feedback from the FIP Board on these suggestions in due course.
Massagno, November 26, 2008