An Appeal for Help . . . by Avril Lansdell

Many charities make use of, or can raise money by selling, things that some of us throw away each day. One of the charities that does this is the Leprosy Mission, bringing healing and restoring dignity to thousands of people overseas affected by the scourge of leprosy.

This charity runs a Stamp and Card Bureau from an office in Hampshire. Supporters all over Britain collect and send in used stamps collected from friends and neighbors. (Your editor is one of the collectors.) The stamps are sorted and resold to philatelists all over the world. The Bureau also collects and sorts postcards and other ephemera. When sending in my last batch of stamps I asked how closely they sorted postcards; could they separate out British canals cards? "Certainly" came back the answer. "We will put this category on our lists and send any to you once we have a dozen of them on sale or return."

So sometime in the future I may receive a few canal cards which I will pass on to David for sale to members. In the meantime, if members who plan to attend lunch in Aylesbury or Cardmeet, could save the stamps from their post I will happily collect these from you and process them with the ones I collect here, with many thanks.

Below: Some stamps even get turned into postcards. This card shows one of the stamps designed by Tony Lewery, and used by the Post Office from 20th July 1993. A complete set of cards was produced from the designs for the different denominations of stamps.

Webmaster's Note: At the Cardmeet in Gloucester, June 2000, David Clough was kind to give me a complete set of these stamps. They are interesting in the photocopy above, but stunningly beautiful in their original color form. Please see below:

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