Club Competitions
There are currently four of these, all judged 'in house' by fellow members. The trophies are the Challenge Cup, for a 'Traditional' entry, or for Aerophilately; the Thematic Salver, where an entry can tell a story or be based on a theme; the Alan Dixon Salver for Cinderella material, and the Paul Mount Salver presented to the winner of the annual 1-sheet competition held on the day of the Annual General Meeting. The first three competitions take place in February or March, and rules are very simple.
Guidelines for MTPS Competitions
The main idea of holding Club competitions is to enable you to share your enthusiasm for a subject with everyone else, but it also offers you a chance to display a handsome trophy on your sideboard for the next year. No outside judges are involved, and the only rule is that there shall not be more than eight pages - if you just want to submit five or six, that's fine. You don't necessarily have to use album leaves, but can choose ordinary A4 paper or card. But the sheets should not be too big, as your entry should only occupy one of our boards. Two A4 pages can be replaced by a single sheet of A3 if that suits you better.
There will be no public criticism of your entry, but members acting as judges can obviously be asked privately what they thought were good points and bad. Material does not have to cost the earth, but try to avoid poorly cancelled stamps and grubby covers (unless your entry is entitled 'Covers recently received by me through the post' and features biro cancels, torn stamps, unreadable postmarks, demands for payment etc. etc.)
Our current categories are three:
- Cinderella, for all the material not listed by Gibbons but connected in some way with the Post Office and its services - revenue stamps, airmail cachets, postal orders, licences and so on.
- The Challenge Cup. This is usually awarded for the best 'Traditional' entry, where material will usually all come from one country. But since we have no separate trophy for Aerophilately, this too can be entered for the Challenge Cup.
- Thematic, which can either tell a story or illustrate a theme. Use as wide a variety of philatelic material as possible - stamps, covers, slogans, booklets.....
Winners in each category are under no obligation to submit their entries at County level, although it would be good to see some fresh contestants there. But if you would like to put your display forward there are certain rules which apply. The main ones are:
- If at all possible, don't mix mint and used stamps on the same page
- Thematic entries must begin with a plan., and must display some 'philatelic knowledge'.
- Don't include stamps not listed by Gibbons (except in Cinderella competition).