Society Chairman Ian Williams opened the meeting, followed by reports from Secretary and Treasurer (more details can be found on our "Annual General Meetings" tab), followed by the statement from Geoff Dyer(wearing "competition secretary" hat):
"I would like to mention that we shall be presenting the silver cups and trophies to winners of the 2025 competitions. For the record and to remind you of the many educational and entertaining mini-presentations that we enjoyed (great effort by contributors, many thanks), here is the list of 2025 entries. There were two cases where two entries won as "equal first" but with the large number of entries (excellent) and rather small number of voters (unfortunately inevitable) it becomes increasingly possible that we could have e.g. 7 winners with 2 votes each. Some trophies have very little room left for engraving (£12 per name) and in AOB I would like to invite discussion of whether we should instigate an extra-time re-vote of equal firsts to come up with a unique trophy winner."
Society Cup - 16 sheets, Any Topic: Won by Geoff Clarke, "Pens, Poets and Prose".
Other entries: Chris Jackson, "Deutschland Decades"; Geoff , "The Last Decade of South West Africa".
Gregson Trophy - up to 10 sheets, Stamps: Won by Ian Williams, "GB Postage Due Stamps".
Other entries: Bernard Walmsley, "Montserrat"; Geoff Clarke, "Regional Stamps of Scotland".Cusack Trophy - 9 sheets, Thematic: Winners (equal first): Tim Gaunt, "Nutrition and Herbal Medicine through the Ages"; Bernard Walmsley, "Garden Birds".
Spencer Trophy - 9 sheets, Postal History: Won by Geoff Clarke, "Universal Postal Union".
Other entry: Geoff Dyer, "Restoration of Penny Postage in South Africa, 1/1/1926".
16/10/2025 evening:
Roger Blackburn Cup – 6 sheets, Any Topic: Won by Geoff Dyer, “Ascension, George VI Definitives”.
Other entries: Geoff Clarke, "Moving the Mail by Road”; Tim Gaunt, “British South Africa Company to Zambia and Zimbabwe”; Neil Power, “Out of the Bin”; Bernard Walmsley, “Conservation”.
Ashton/President’s Trophy - 1 page, letter N: Won by (equal first): Tim Gaunt, “Nigeria, Colonial History through Stamps”; Derek Harborne, “National Health Insurance Stamps”.
Other entries: Geoff Clarke, "Normans”; Neil Power, “New Patent Application”; Bernard Walmsley, North Borneo”; Bob Simm, “Numismatic Covers”; Chris Jackson, “3 Areas beginning with N which No Longer Issue Stamps”; Ian Williams, “Not Known at this address”; Geoff Dyer, “Neolithic Namibian Native Art”.
