RPA main screen
"Project 2013" Beginning
The year 2013 will be a monumental one for the RPA as we celebrate our centennial. It's never to early to begin thinking of ways to mark the occasion. Bert Keiner has suggested a compendium of articles dealing with Rochester and regional postal history. So much of this information is still buried in reference works as well as within the collections of current members. Our intent is to commission members with one or two research assignments per year. Their works would be published in Hinges & Tongs and then compiled with others in 2013 for a masterwork publication. What areas of Rochester postal history do you collect? Do you have any interesting stories to add? Contact any of the officers with your thoughts and ideas.
Tales of the UNPA
It was a pleasure to welcome two representatives from the UN to ROPEX this past year: Jill Kearns, Chief of UNPA-NY and Roger Lyons, UNPA Stamp Show Coordinator. During the ROPEX banquet, those of us at their table gained great insight into this international organization's operation.
Both are seasoned veterans of UN service. Mrs. Kearns is a 37 year UN employee, originally from Australia and now living in a New Jersey suburb with her husband. Roger Lyons himself has 30 years working for the UN.
The UNPA staff is all part-time labor with the exception of a few key managers and supervisors. Employment can swell to 40 when new issues are released and is cut back as the demand dies down. They are apparently all non-collectors, as are Jill and Roger.
It was interesting to note that there are three full time USPS postal employees working with the UNPA-NY at all times. These workers act as the handling liaisons between the UNPA and US Postal Service, as the UNPA functions under a decades old agreement with the now USPS. The UNPA does not handle all of the internal/external mail for the entire UN New York complex- just the philatelic mail.
Nearly 75% of all UNPA business comes from subscribers. It is unclear as to how individual orders versus those coming from the web can be credited for the remaining 25%.
United Nations stamp issues are among the least error-prone in the world. That may be surprising after you realize that the UN hires many companies around the world to print its conservative yearly offerings. Are there unknown errors which have escaped the hands of collectors? The answer is yes! The most striking may be sheets of a Namibia issue which was found by a sharp-eyed inspector in New York who noticed a color missing. Roger has found a few perforation errors from time to time, some of them among the stock at the stamp shows he worked, just escaping the hands of collectors.
As an international meeting place, we discussed security at the UN headquarters. Hundreds of heads of state visit the offices yearly, especially during opening sessions in October. The only government leader who causes any kind of stir is our own President Clinton. The place "jumps" whenever he stops by for a visit, with security "to the max."
What's in store for the UNPA? Well, apparently not as much in the New York or Geneva office as in Vienna. Austria has joined with many other European countries in accepting the Euro as its national currency by 2002. By that year, all UN-Vienna stamps valued in Austrian schillings will be demonetized and only current UN stamps in euros be valid. By the way, the Geneva office is very small in philatelic terms, and referred to as a mere "satellite" office.
We spend a wonderful evening eating, discussing stamps, and handing out awards to the many deserving exhibitors. It certainly was a ROPEX awards banquet to remember!
One of the more memorable moments for me during ROPEX'99 happened during Saturday night's pleasurable post-awards banquet "ritual" of examining the exhibits. For those of you unaware of this tradition, it's customary to invite banquet goers to the exhibit frames after the announcement of the award winners. I have no idea how this started, but maybe it just gives everyone a chance to second guess the judges. I can say that in all candor as I was an apprentice judge this year!
Well, Ada Prill, exhibits chair, had to pull me over and show me some of the new ribbons placed on the frames hours earlier. There's a different one for each of the 5 award levels. In particular, she wanted me to examine the orange silver-bronze ribbons. An image of it is attached here, and I'll ask you to take a good look at it now before reading on!
It took me a minute to figure what was so unusual about these orange strips, but then it struck me. What was this a new award level? Perhaps a "Polish" gold? (No slander intended to our Polish friends!) No, it was a "Silevr Brozne"- really- take another look! Obviously, no one had the opportunity to inspect this batch, and quality control went out the window! We'll definitely have a word with the printers sometime soon!
50 Year RPA Member Honored
Do you recognize the smiling face above? He's been a member of the RPA for half a century, and drove some of our founding members to RPA meetings in the 1940's!
Yes, that's Mark Hull, proudly displaying a plaque presented to him during our December 1998 meeting. He's believed to be the only RPA member ever reaching that milestone.
Mark is a wealth of information about the history of the RPA, and you can test him on that any time! He's pleased to be very active again in RPA activities, and hopes to go on for another 50!