Circle members did well at Spring Stampex in London, with Gold medals for Atef Sarian (ESC 639, Third Issue, 5 frames), David Jones (ESC 716, Egyptian Syndicates, 1 frame – it was good to see revenues on display), Brian Callan (ESC 694, Postcards of the River Lee, Cork, 5), and Jon Aitchison (ESC 661, Book Tokens, newly introduced Ephemera class, 2). Displaying for the first time, Sami Sadek (ESC 559) won Large Silver with 3 frames of Fayum TPOs and learnt a lot. Brian Callan and Jon Aitchison each also had Large Vermeils (Atef Sarian was bemused by his four LVs for what was in fact fine traditional Egypt), and Aitchison took a Vermeil and had four Channel Islands exhibits in the display frames.

Tony Cakebread (ESC 536), our Antipodean Agent, tells us that the massive collection of 20,000 Egypt postcards collected by his predecessor, Tony Chisholm, has finally found a new home thanks to the good offices of Gaertner & Co. We are still hoping that the electronic version of the collection will one day be able to find a new home too – on the pages of the Circle website.

He also reports on recent philatelic news within NZ, which has been dominated by the discovery of a rare early Russian single stamp, discovered within an old family album bought cheaply at an Auckland auction by Robin Gwynn, RDP. Robin is known internationally for his exhibits of NZ Second Sidefaces and (international) Crash Mail.

He would be known to both John Sears and John Davis, having attended one of Tony Chisholm's gatherings at Matarangi Beach. At international auction - after the local Tiflis embossed stamp had been dismissed as a fake at one earlier attempt at expertisation but later accepted to be one of only six copies known - was a jaw-dropping £165,000, something we philatelists all dream of but few ever experience!