Local Stamp Club

The club here in Fredericton Meets twice a month and our dues are $25.00 per year. This makes us members the the Royal Philatelic Society and we get their circuits every 2nd meeting. We are also insured through them.

There are 35 members and we average 25 members per meeting(some of the more affluent(I think that's the right word) members travel quite a bit to world wide shows.

Dianne

Kirk, the Wild Turkey old geezer..does the lotting for our club auction...when we catch a mistake in our favor..he says "one too many Wild Turkeys!"

Dianne I also travel to world wide shows..Ottawa Canada...hope you can make it one of these days..stay overnight and do both days !

Hi, I belong to two clubs locally, at £4 per annum, and £2.50 per annum.
Both clubs have the usual committees, chairman, secretary, treasurer, publicity & auction secretaries etc. I think I mentioned in a previous posting that we have about 80 and 140 members.

Both clubs organise auctions and 'Packets'.
Packets are boxes that contain about 20 small booklets of 12 pages approx A5 size, filled with stamps that members hope to sell to other members of the packet group (not everyone in the club signs to receive the packet). These are generally hand delivered to the next in line, and so on back to the 'Packet' secretary who has responsibility for the receipt of monies for stamps sold and payment to the sellers.

We meet in local church hall meeting rooms one evening each month and about 25% of the members may attend.

I had been treasurer to one club some years ago but a change in job and different work commitments made it difficult to continue and I relinquished the post.

Regards.

$10/year, meet once/month and once a year I give presentation and once a year I feed them for which club reimburses $10.00. Every meeting we have discussion, a presentation, and an auction with all proceeds going to the seller. December meeting is just one big auction.

Phil

I plan on it. I would love to meet some of you guys someday. I just have to stop working those 70 hr weeks first

Dianne

Thanks everyone for your reply's. I haven't had anyone contact me yet that is interested in joining a stamp club. I've put out 70 flyers and have it advertised in two newspapers. I plan to put it in two more newspapers soon. So I am just keeping my fingers crossed. The closest APS Sanctioned club is about 85 miles away from me. That's too far to drive to join. But I may drive it once just to get a feel for what a club is like and how it functions. It's still early in the process for forming a new club I know. But I was hoping to hear from someone by now.

Charles,

I wonder if you could get any help from the APS on this? I don't know if they could put you in touch with members that are in your area. It might be a violation of the members' privacy, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to contact the APS and see.

Good luck. I know it's frustrating when you go to all the trouble of putting up flyers and advertising and then no one shows up. This has happened to me several times with the junior club I run. I wish you the best!

Definitely visit the nearest club meeting for ideas. (You might also pick off a few people who drive 45 miles to that club.) And don't be discouraged if it is dismal. I've visited several different clubs in addition to my "regular" one, and there is a lot of variability in the quality of the meetings. Most have been pretty good, but a couple were nonplussing.

I'm lucky in that my club has a good mix of people, with a fairly wide range of interests. Monthly meetings, $15/yr, no business meetings during the summer months, silent auctions most months. The club is affiliated with APS.

Maybe someone here has a club that maintains an online newsletter archive? It would be worth reading a year's worth of newsletters (even the meeting minutes) to get a flavor for how things work.

The Nova Scotia Stamp Club's online edition of it's club newsletter is here:
http://www.nsstampclub.ca/newsletter.htm

but this does not include club minutes as far s I can see. However there is the club Constitution and a breakdown of how the club is organized and executive members.

Perhaps the club executive would be able to, by email, answer questions posed? I have no authority to promise such but it never hurts to ask.

Kia Ora (Hello) from NZ,I am a novice collector,who lives in a small town. I have yet to find out if there is a local stamp club. If not I thought of starting one. I have been watching auction sites and see local people selling stamps so there could be some interest.
If I do start one,I will put a notice on the local supermarket - we have only one; send a letter to local schools,churches & sports clubs,etc,including the local bowling club. I will also mention it to the lady at the local bookshop/post office as they sell packets of newly released stamps for collectors. (I have put photos of the new world cup/rugby stamps on the forum,"show us your sports stamps")
Depending on the number of people interested,we can either meet at the local chess clubrooms. we could meet here at home,but I'll have to make sure what's inside is more interesting than the outside.

Joeytoat Good Luck with your effort to start a Stamp Club! I also am trying to get a club started and after two weeks of notices I have not had any responses. I have had a couple calls of someone wanting to sell stamps so I plan to follow up on those after the New Year.

Hi Charles,I have yet to try some of my own ideas as mentioned above - hopefully they will work and I'll get some response. If/when I get a club started,I'll also start a blog just to keep "members" up to date. I also thought of joining local clubs,like the Lions club. I can only try and if it doesn't work,I'll try plan B.

Joeytoat I sent a letter and it has been approved for the school news letter. I also had it put in our Senior Citizens Monthly News Letter. I have advertised it on our Local Radio station and put a Community Announcement Advertisement in three local small newspapers. I also put out 70 Flyers in two towns and plan to put out another 70 flyers in two more towns. We are in an extremely Rural area in Northern Michigan.Our village population is only 1,019. There isn't even one city in our entire county. Our County is made up of villages and townships.

Kia Ora Charles,It looks like you are well on your way to starting your club. Good luck. Our town has about 2500 people I think,with other small surrounding rural areas so there should be some interest here. If/when I start a club,I'll think about traveling to the rural areas if I get 2 or 3 inquires from those areas. The first week of the month,I could go to area A;the second week area B; the third week,area C,etc. Then maybe once every 2 or 3 months,have everyone meet in our town.
We had an USA teenager who is traveling around NZ with a German teenager,stay with us for 2 weeks. He was from Minneapolis. They traveled north of Auckland for 3 weeks and are due to call in and see us tomorrow,before heading south.