The main featured display at Autumn Stampex 2022 will be on Africa, and the Egypt Study Circle is committed to being a major contributor. The exhibition takes place at the Business Design Centre, London, from 28 September to 1 October 2022. Entries can be for any number of frames, which cost £25 each, and can be non-competitive or judged, which will win a medal. Every entry receives a certificate. All FIP classes are available; your exhibit can be on any subject related to Egypt.

We are honoured to have been asked by the Royal Philatelic Society London to stage an Egypt display to mark the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The date of this event has been moved from an earlier announcement and is now Thursday 17 November 2022. We hope that many members will want to take part. A colour booklet will illustrate all entries. This display is completely free to enter and we are likely to have a Circle lunch to mark the occasion on that day.

To help with planning we should like to know who is interested. Space permitting, there is no limit to the number of entries you can submit. Please email our Chairman, Jon Aitchison, at britishlocals@aol.com advising which events you want to take part in, how many entries, how many frames and likely titles. This does not commit you but will help us. More details in the March QC.

Please consider taking part in these important, milestone Study Circle events. Thank you.

It was a small but select group of members who braved the coronavirus to attend our first full meeting since February 8 2020 at Autumn Stampex at the Design Centre in Islington, North London. The list of apologies for non-attendance was understandably long, given the health advice, but ten members were present, including one making his first meeting. Welcome to Dave Sutton (ESC 735) of Canvey Island.

The full list of those present was as follows: John Davis (President), Jon Aitchison (Chairman), Neil Hitchens (Vice Chairman), Mike Murphy (Secretary), Sami Sadek (Treasurer), Mike Bramwell, John Clarke, David Sutton, Ronny Van Pellecom (Belgium), Richard Wheatley. The meeting welcomed another new member, Ahmed Selim from Cairo (ESC 741), who applied specifically to take part in Auction 63.

For the first days of Stampex we held a society table in the mezzanine gallery, manned by two or three members each day, with Auction items and pages from members’ collections on show. Despite the disappointing attendance at the show in general, we received a good number of visitors at the table and handed out publicity material to the majority of them.

The Auction was the main topic of the meeting, with lively room bidding augmenting the postal/email bids, which had closed a couple of days before. There was a total of 31 advance bidders, and overall a satisfactory total of 135 of the 248 lots (55 per cent) were sold. A number of books offered on behalf of the late Alan Jeyes’ family went unsold, but were later purchased as a single lot. The Auction sales totalled £3105, realising a commission of £839.69 toward Circle funds.

The next Action is planned for spring Stampex next year (re-named the London 2022 Exhibition), when we are again considering having a society table to generate publicity and knowledge of who we are and what we do. Our meeting will be held on the Saturday of the show, February 26, from 2pm. Members wishing to enter material for sale should contact Sami Sadek, the Auctioneer (escauction@hotmail.com), with typed lists and (if possible) good scans of the items in question. Please remember that as the Auction ends with room bidding, all items for sale must be present with the Auctioneer on the day. The meeting will also hold our AGM for 2021, and members attending should bring material to display on the theme “Postcards”.