The Brantford Stamp Club (BSC) hosted its annual show this January for the first time since early 2020, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
The Jan. 14 show drew more than 100 people with a dozen dealers coming from across Southern Ontario.
“For the first time back, the turnout has been pretty good, and everyone seems to be busy,” said BSC President and show co-chair Bob Anderson.
Eleven-year-old Elliot Sim told the Brantford Expositor he was “looking for sports stamps, especially soccer,” while browsing the show’s club-run youth booth.
Father Ryan Sim, who began collecting when he was about his son’s age, told the Expositor about his interest in Canadian stamps: “It’s a way to learn about your country and about history.”
“It’s like travelling the world from the comfort of your home.”
Three decades after its first meeting in 1938, the BSC held its first show in conjunction with the Postal History Society of Ontario, which would change its name to the Postal History Society of Canada several years later. A second club show followed in 1974 to mark the centenary of the telephone, for which Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell performed tests in and around Brantford in the mid-1870s.
An eight-cent stamp (Scott #641) issued in July 1974 by Canada’s Post Office Department (known as Canada Post since 1981) also marked the anniversary with Brantford as the first-day city. The BSC then held a three-day show in June 1977 to celebrate Brantford’s centennial as an incorporated city.
The roughly 40-member club hosted its first annual show in 2004.