Feeling a bit like a trout among swordfish, I found myself at my old alma mater, the Kingston campus of St Lawrence College. Today it was serving as the venue for the three-day British North America Philatelic Society annual stamp show and convention. Perhaps trout is attaching too much importance to my philately - I'm more of a carp - a bottom-feeder. I'm never going to spend $2,500 on a 150 year-old piece of paper like a true BNAPSer - I like a bargain too much! And I know what I like - when I see it.
But that didn't stop me from partaking in free parking and free attendance and with the venue so close to our home, of course I went to check out the exhibits and the bourse (top photo and below). Even though there were concurrent sessions, there were lots of vendors and buyers. I scanned the list of sessions, available to the public, but the topics were a little either before-my-time or over-my-head (large queens, small queens, and admirals, oh my!)
One of my first, and last, stops was as legendary dealer Roy Houtby's booth. Roy was busy and just moved out of the frame at left as I snapped the above photo. I found five boxes of collections/albums and Roy mentioned all were 50% off the sticker price. I was one happy carp! See my finds at the end of this post. I also enjoyed walking around checking out the various buyers' techniques - some were using their laptop-based want lists to find those elusive stamps they needed. Intense!
While ambling aimlessly about, I checked out the plethoric of fine frame exhibits at the far end of the Event Centre, just visible in the photo above. They were very specialized, and were a lot to absorb. Among the most interesting to me were various items of postal history associated with Royal Canadian Navy vessels of World War II, ranging from lowly motor torpedo boats to mighty aircraft carriers. Examples from Flower Class corvettes:
In the foyer outside the Event Centre were several excellent exhibits on Kingston-based philatelic history. Check them out in this post in my Kingston's Hanley Spur blog. My sixth Traveler album, packaged together with an Ambassador album, and between which the previous owner split pages from one album: A-M in the Ambassador and N-Z in the Traveler. Lots of blank pages available!
Envelope display stock pages and a packed stock book of older stamps - remember, both half-price!
Some of the upcoming event cards available at registration, as well as two specially-produced covers for BNAPEX with overprints and special cancellations on the Kingston-related cachets sold by the BNAPS. I had my choice of aircraft, going with the ugly but effective Avro Anson!
At the Trajan Media/Canadian Stamp News booth, I picked up a copy of the Unitrade Postage Stamp Identifier for that envelope full of 'Hard to ID' that I'll work on someday. My future success with albumizing hinges on ... more hinges. Thanks to Trajan for the 20% subscriber discount! I also found a few more copies of the CSDA's My First Stamp Album to include with future Stamp Collecting Starter Packs and two recent Canada Post FDC's:
This was my first attendance at a national-level exhibition, and it was impressive! St Lawrence College provided an excellent venue for BNAPEX, with rooms available at the nearby residence for a reasonable rate. Although I overheard one conversation about a 'swordfish spouse' relaxing back at the 'hotel', and another randomly saying you can't get decent pizza in Halifax! The Event Centre was brightly lit and high-ceilinged, one of several new additions to the campus. I found myself walking past some hallways that I recall leading to our classrooms and laboratories waaaay back in 1982-85 - our Medical Laboratory Technology student years. Further reinforcing the fact that bearing that span of time in mind, I may have been the youngest, and least grey-haired (!) attendee at the exhibition. And hair dye doesn't count!
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