GEORGE NEWS - The Post Office Tree Philatelic society is hosting an inter-club meeting on Thursday 8 September, at the St Peter's Church hall in Riley Street, Mossel Bay.
This social gathering is a joint meeting of the philatelic societies of Mossel Bay, George and Stilbaai.
Vernon Mitchell, vice-president of the SA Philatelic Federation in the Eastern Cape, will be the guest speaker.
He will exhibit his collection of Cinderellas and discuss the huge variety of labels that exist.
There will also be other exhibits, as well as some philatelic material for sale.
The meeting starts at 19:00 and members of the public are welcome to attend.
In philately, a Cinderella stamp is virtually anything resembling a postage stamp, but it is not a postal stamp because it was not issued for postal purposes by a government postal administration.
Most of these labels are gummed as it is assumed they were to be stuck on envelopes or containers, however, some are found without gum as they are pinned to garments of volunteers doing charity appeals.
There is a wide variety of Cinderella stamps, such as those printed for promotional use by businesses, churches and political or non-profit groups.
These labels were sold by various bodies to raise funds and were affixed by their purchasers to letters and cards. Since 1907 the Red Cross Society has been one of the main producers and users of labels. The most widely used charity labels are Christmas seals that were used on Christmas greeting mail to raise money for charities, such as children's and anti-TB funds.
Private companies or local authorities issued labels to provide a local service. For example, smaller railway companies produced stamps to pay for the carriage of mail on the railway route.
Private airline and bus companies have issued similar items.
The poster stamp was an advertising label, a little larger than most postage stamps, that originated in the mid-19th century and quickly spurred a collecting craze, growing in popularity until World War I and then declining by World War II until they were almost forgotten except by collectors of Cinderella stamps.
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