The U.S.-based Rochester Philatelic Association (RPA) is once again sponsoring its annual “Design-A-Stamp” competition for young students in both Canada and the United States.
Up to 10 finalists will be displayed on May 15-16 at the RPA’s annual Ropex show, where three winners will be chosen by a panel of the club’s members. Held at the Greater Canandaigua Civic Center in Canandaigua, N.Y., the show is within a two-hour drive of the Canada-U.S. border at Fort Erie, Ont.
All Canadian and U.S. students in grades 3-6 are eligible to enter, and the top three entries will win $50, $25 and $15, respectively. All designs must be the entrant’s original artwork and be submitted using the provided stamp template. Any media can be used for the design, which must include the denomination (“Forever”) and country of origin (either “US,” “USA,” “United States” or “United States of America”). Each student can only enter one design, and there is no entry fee.
Entrants must completely fill out the official entry form available at rpastamps.org/ropexpast/a2020/designastampentryform2020.pdf.
All entries must be postmarked by April 1 and submitted to the RPA, P.O. Box 10206 Brighton Station, Rochester, NY 14610-0206.
The ‘muddy waters’ variety of Canada’s 1898 ‘map’ stamp is franked on a commercial cover sent to Montréal by the M. Brennan & Sons Mfg. Co. in Hamilton, Ont. (Photo via Hinges & Tongs)
‘HINGES & TONGS’
The latest edition of the RPA’s quarterly newsletter, Hinges & Tongs, touches on Canada’s 1898 “map” stamp, which was highlighted at the club’s November meeting.
Led by RPA member Robert Lighthouse, the talk was a follow-up on his first map stamp presentation in 2014—available in full here.
“This time, his focus turned to the unique printing process that had led to these inherent flaws. His talk worked through these variations for each of the four plates that were used during the two year run of almost 20 million stamps,” reads the newsletter.
“The most obvious difference that can be observed is in the color of the seas which ranged from lavender to blue to blue-green and, in some unique cases, gray. Printing a tri-color stamp was a challenge for the technology of the time and the resulting variations are not unique to this stamp.”
At the end of his recent presentation, Lighthouse shared some map stamp usages, including first-day covers, perfins, add-on cancels and bisects.