Dear Member

It is with much pleasure that, in recognition of our Society’s 75th Anniversary celebrations in 2025, the President of the RPSL, Mike Roberts FRPSL has invited us to provide a major display to the Fellows, Members and guests of the Royal on the above date and time. We have been delighted to accept this invitation and the purpose of this note is to provide you with further information together with an invitation to participate.

1. We displayed at the Royal for the Society’s 50th and 60th Anniversary but on this occasion, there are many more frames available for use and therefore we would like to encourage as many members as possible to join us on this auspicious occasion. There are 54 frames to fill with each frame holding 16 sheets.

2. Should you wish to take part and provide a display, may I ask you please at this early stage, to send Richard Flemming by email at secretary@ciss.uk the title of your display by the very latest the 10th March 2024. If you wish to offer more than one display, please do so up to a maximum of three.

3. Each frame should consist of a different topic and further details of suggested topic areas are available in the document shown by clicking on the box below:

75th Anniversary Display Topics

4. By so doing, this will afford us the opportunity to choose material which will provide as varied an afternoon as possible. We hope that all types of philatelic material will be represented, and a panel will choose the displays from the submissions. We do hope to invite at least one exhibit from each member who wishes to display.

5. We plan to notify acceptances to members as soon as practicable but hopefully before the 20th May 2024.

6. If your exhibit(s) is/are selected, you will be requested to provide a brief description of your material of around 250-300 words, together with a colour scan of either two or three stamps or one cover for inclusion in the brochure which we must provide for the RPSL members. Further details on how this is to be done together with timings will follow in due course.

7. Each member of the CISS will also receive a copy of the brochure.

8. The RPSL does not provide Insurance cover for exhibits; therefore, any insurance risk will be the responsibility of the member.

The Executive Committee look forward to hearing from you and should you have any questions, please feed them through Richard or me. We shall keep you informed of our progress.

With best regards,

David Winnie FRPSL
Chairman,
Channel Islands Specialists’ Society

Your Society is pleased to announce an excellent further advancement to our Website.

Today sees the roll-out of Phase 1 of our “Searchable Journals” project. Members will now be able to search our Journals from 2013 to date in a choice of user friendly different ways.

We believe this will be a very useful source of information for our members but, if we are to progress to Phases 2 and 3 whereby ALL of our Journals back to 1985 will be searchable (this will involve a considerable amount of work) then the ball is in your court. We will be monitoring usage by our Members as a way of determining whether to press on with Phase 2 and then Phase 3.

We would, therefore encourage you all to search, “play” and enjoy.

Please visit the Journal Index page here.

Your Executive Committee together with our Website Administrator have worked hard during the lockdown to review the content of our existing website for the first time for some years. At the same time, we registered a new web address, www.ciss.uk, some seven letters shorter than our previous address.

We are therefore very pleased that you have chosen to visit our relaunched and redesigned website. Along with a new modern design, you will also find the website easier to navigate. The website has been designed to be viewed on a range of devices including computers, mobile phones and tablets.

New features include:

• Easier logging in – you can log in from any page via the login box on the right hand side.

• Updated Channel Islands Topics pages

• Members Discussion – you can post a reply to our newly added discussion board

• Latest News feed directly on the right hand side of the page.

And, of course, you have already discovered that your existing login will continue to work.

I hope you will find the changes we have made interesting and user friendly.

Thanks to our Committee Member, Steve Wells, we have been given permission to access the Frank Falla archive, which I am sure our members will find extremely interesting, not least the maps page. We are very grateful to Dr Gilly Carr, who was given the archive by Frank Falla’s daughter, for providing this permission. To view the archive, please visit https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/, or use our Links page

It has recently come to my notice from a visit to Herm Island and via our Committee Member, John Triggs, that things have changed at Herm Island from a postal perspective. In the first place, there is now no officially paid Sub-Postmaster in situ although the Herm Gift Shop does run a counter and still has the original self-inking datestamp. This, seemingly, can be used by invitation only, evidenced by the lady at the counter being prepared to cancel the postage stamp on a postcard I sent to myself by favour.

It appears, however, that ordinarily, the mail is collected uncancelled at the Gift Shop, placed in a mail bag which is then taken by the last Trident Ferry of the day for passage to St. Peter Port where it is collected from the boat and transferred to the La Vranque sorting office. It is here that all uncancelled mail is franked but with the La Vranque datestamp being used.

The upshot of all this is that, unlike Alderney and Sark which remain as Sub-Post Offices in their own right, the new 34mm datestamp recently issued in Guernsey to the Head Post Office and Sub-Post Offices will not be available to Herm. How long the old Self Inking datestamp will be available for use is open to question.

David Winnie

This month, Jersey Post has also celebrated 50 years of Postal Independence from the British Postal Service. To mark the occasion, they have issued a set of eight commemorative stamps and a prestige booklet entitled “Jersey Post – 50 Years of Postal History, 1969 -2019”. In addition, they are offering a postal history themed “Offer of the Month”.

This takes the form of their 2006 Prestige Booklet “Postal History II – Postal Vehicles” which is available at half price. Usually costing £10.67, this can be obtained for £5.33 during the month of October whilst stocks last.

David Winnie

At the invitation of Guernsey Post, David Winnie, Chairman, was invited to attend a Reception on the 1st October to celebrate 50 years to the day since the Island’s postal service became independent. It was on 1 October 1969 that Guernsey broke away from Great Britain’s General Post Office to stand on its own two feet. A free exhibition to mark the fact is taking place at St. James throughout October. Spread over three floors including the stairway, it features 22 stamp issues that span the last 50 years.

Our Committee Member and local resident, John Triggs, was also in attendance together with his wife, and introduced me to the Chief Executive, Boley Smillie, Bridget Yabsley, Head of Philatelic and Dawn Gallienne, Head of Corporate Engagement who have been busy sorting through the original artwork of half a century’s worth of stamp designs with a view to choosing a selection to represent each decade.

This introduction provided a good opportunity for me to mention that the CISS will be 70 years old in 2020 and to celebrate, a long weekend has been arranged in Guernsey for our members from the 24th – 26th April next year. This was welcomed and Guernsey Post would like to support us with this event so “watch this space”.

The exhibition is well worth a visit and is open Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm until Thursday 31st October 2019. A free booklet is available to visitors at St. James.