ALL COLLECTORS AND ESPECIALLY MEMBERS OF THE EPHEMERA SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA INC will be very pleased to see and hear that our founder Honor Godfrey has been awarded an MBE for services to English tennis – specifically for her work at the Wimbledon Museum. Here is a snapshot fresh from the courtyard (in truest sense) from Buckingham Palace.
Here is a link to the Museum.
By the by
We tried to send Honor a congratulatory telegram, but they no longer exist. Australia Post advised we could send an electronic postcard or a singagram. We went with a formal email.
There was a time when telegrams were the new collectable
ANOTHER addition to the expanding – list of bizarre objects that hobbyists choose to collect is telegrams.
Collectors claim that the material is as varied and interesting as postage stamps, and they foretell that telegrams and their covers may provide the stuff of which the next collection quest is built.
Every blank bears the printed address of the sending office, and there are many hundreds of offices. The design and layout, and, of course, the date, are changed occasionally. A more recent source of classifications is the invention of special date and occasion and commemorative forms, like those for Mother’s Day, Easter, birthday and congratulatory telegrams.
Some of these decorated blanks are attractive and artistic. Foreign countries and in particular Germany and the Scandinavian countries. furnish highly elaborate and really beautiful specimens of such telegrams.
The major part of existing collections of telegrams consists of blanks that have been used. Their messages are a mine of human interest, humour and sidelights on history.
Collectors of telegrams make their “finds” in the same places as collectors of stamps. Old attics yield up bundles of them at times, a few people have personal telegrams saved over their whole lifetime, and advertisements run by collectors in hobby magazines bring in a continuous trickle of items for appraisal.
Up to the present prices in this field, except in a few cases where the messages are of real historical distinction, are still low-bargain prices, in the estimation of enthusiasts who see an important future for the pastime.
kenneth young says
Congratulations to Honor Godfrey. One of the most lovely people I ever met (Norwich, England 1973 ish). Lovely, charming, smart, dedicated collector, and an original thinker. Well done, Honor.