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Part
7, Issue # 64 - May 9, 2002
Stamps
and stamp collectors do from time to time attract the attention of the
mainstream media especially as philatelists do continue to bring laurels for
India.
?India
Today? the leading newsmagazine of India took an interest in philately way
back in 1987 after the biggest loss took place for Indian Philately. The
then secretary-general of the Philatelic Congress of India (PCI) and the
national commissioner for the
AMERIPEX?86 world philatelic exhibition, M G Pittie lost five collections
while carrying exhibits to Chicago, USA via Canada. The AMERIPEX?86 Committee
announced a reward of US $ 25,000 for information leading to the recovery
of the exhibits lost. US Federal Bureau of Investigations was working on this
case without much success.
Two
of the exhibits lost belonged to P Gupta of Kolkata, the then President of PCI.
One of his exhibits ?Cochin? was in the FIP Championship Class and another
was ?Indian Maritime Mail?. An exhibit of ?India Classics? that included
the famous ?Inverted Head? besides several philatelic jewels belonged to S B
Kothari of Kolkata. The fourth exhibit ?Soruth? belonged to Dhirubhai Mehta
of Mumbai and like all other exhibits had won Gold Medals on many occasions. The
fifth exhibit ?Indore? belonged to a young exhibitor Ravi Dangi of Indore.
These exhibits were then estimated at Rs. 15 million.
As a trader and office-bearer of the Philatelic Traders Society
(PTS) said in London: ?The
market value of two out of the five collections lost could be as much as half a
million pounds.?
Click
here to read the article
http://www.geocities.com/mjhingan/Content/Features/india_today.htm
?The
Week?, another news magazine spoke in 1996 to leading philatelists and talked
about the possibility of investing in stamps as a means of hiding black money.
Visit
the following link to read the full article.
http://www.geocities.com/mjhingan/Content/Features/the_week.htm
We
are continuing to receive responses from our readers on this column. Reproduced
below is the response received from Umesh Kakkeri of Mumbai:
?Thank
you very much for publishing my letter, which I had written to the president of
PCI on INPEX-EMPIREPEX 2001.
It
will be disgraceful to know that this very president of the PCI has not bothered
to write to me or even sending the acknowledgement of my letter, or single line
stating of considering or looking into the matter, since almost 4 months have
been past for my writing a Registered Acknowledgement Due letter to him.
And
on top of it, Mr. Dhirubahi Mehta and Mr. Vispy Dastoor, both former presidents
of PCI, think I am a ping pong ball which they are hitting from one court to
other (any body can make that out from their respective letters).
What
any gentleman can expect from these shameless people occupying high offices and
doing nothing?
I
request you to publish this letter of mine, so that my fellow philatelists
should know that what kind of people are taking care of Indian philately and
what kind of people we are electing as a president of the topmost body in Indian
philately (PCI).?
Part
8, Issue # 65 - May 16, 2002
We
have been constantly receiving feedback for this column and we are in the
process of compiling the same. We
will continue with more inputs on philately in transition in the next issue.
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