although after having joined this board in Jan 2017 and having posted into a low number of threads already I still owe you my self-introduction
I'm Juergen, and my parents introduced me to stamp collecting back in the 1960's. Thanks to my mom having been a stamp dealer specialized in UK stamps, and my dad having been a BPP expert for the classical stamps of Spain, I received valuable guidance on collecting.
I seriously started collecting stamps at an age of 10. Areas of interest were Poland, Australia and thematic topics. A most welcome Christmas gift was a copy of the ACSC 1974. Although it at times challenged my English comprehension abilities over its limits
I started enjoying the Roo and KGV issues and got into looking for plate errors. Early exhibition experience in the youth class told me that there has to be a difference between a complete collection and an award-winning exhibit. Later, I lost interest in Poland when they had issued more than 3,000 different stamps; a mark that modern Australia Post has sadly left behind as well, and paused the active collecting period for many years. After having started slowly with instructional markings on Australian covers I finally started over in 2009 when GEO.ADAMS receipting marks and Tattersalls stubs on letters made me curious. Auction descriptions in Germany tried explaining them contradictorily as censor marks, registration labels and the like, but apparently did none of them know what it really was. Finding David McNamees great Catalogue and Handbook of Tattersall's covers in the Philatelic Library of Munich was my starting point for becoming serious about the story about this lottery.
I am living in Germany, having moved several times. Whilst I used to stay in Munich, Bavaria, for many years I'm now situated in the state of Lower Saxony next to Hannover.
Visiting Australia had been my dream since my youth. By now I've been to Melbourne twice visiting the stamp shows MELBOURNE 2013 and 2017. In the latter I participated with a four frames display about the Tattersall story in the non-competitive ROYALPEX2017 section, where I enjoyed meeting several prominent collectors, society officials, book authors, judges, and dealers. I am very thankful for valuable feedback from RPSV and TPS members that I've received regarding that display.
My home town's stamp club hosted in April 2017 a competitive stamp exhibition on regional level. There an adapted and improved version of the Tattersall exhibit was shown in the postal history section. It had been surprising to me that not all Australian collectors had known about collecting Tatt’s; however it didn't come as a surprise that this topic was perfectly new for a stamp exhibition in Germany. The head of the jury (who is also seasoned at F.I.P. events) got intrigued by this topic, which resulted finally in that exhibit being rated 'best of show'.
Now I'm after improving and expanding the postal history exhibit to prepare it for higher exhibition levels. Additionally a German publisher invited me to write and publish a book in German language (serving those local collectors who won't comprehend the reference books in English language) about Tattersall tickets, other ephemera and the story around – a task that I'm currently busy with. Guess what: whoever has tickets, result sheets, memos or complete outgoing Tatt's mail to show or to offer would make my day when contacting me, and/or posting to thread EPEHEMERA: TATTERSALL SYNDICATES - POST IMAGES/INFO HERE.
Please accept my excuses for this verbose introduction whilst I'm looking forward to getting in touch with many of you
Juergen