Anybody here a member?

Unrecognized States Philatelic Society

link fixed

I came across this group via that same eBay seller.

Not wishing to be pedantic - and I know I could have mentoned this earlier, but i couldn't get into the link - but how does this thread relate to 'Do-It-Yourself?'

Originally posted by Daniel Yes, as far as I'm aware. That's the first time that I've seen the nine pence green which appears to be available only as an auction item rather than Buy it Now. However, I seem to recall that he is fairly generous and often adds free extras. I think I got the 5 pence and half crown for the price of one.

Thanks. I might try and get hold of those then. I didn't think much of the movie but hugely enjoyed the books and the National Theatre adaptation, although I only saw the first year with Anna Maxwell Martin, Dominic Cooper, Timothy Dalton and Patricia Hodge and missed the revival the following year which had some changes to the playscript as well as an almost completely different cast (including Michelle Dockery - Susan Sto Helit in Sky's Hogfather - in a small role) and which I would have like to see for comparison.

Is anyone still interested in this topic?

I'm a founding member of the Unrecognized States Philatelic Society and, as far as I know, the only member still actively collecting. I'm also almost certainly the person selling the Sky Ferry Postage "stamps" on eBay. Other people certainly could be selling them but I rather think I'm the only person with any left.

Matt

The Unrecognized States Philatelic Society is a pretty pretentious name especially when you consider how large (or actually how small) a group that we were/are. We were a fairly dedicated group of cinderella/artistamp collectors who met through the regular Memphis stamp club. However, we felt that the majority of the club trivialized our interests, if they paid us any attention at all, so a small group started meeting more-or-less monthly at the Raleigh branch public library in, I'd guess, 2004. We never had more than 20 people as "members" but we were pretty serious. One guy would have to drive five hours to get to a meeting. Meetings consisted almost of entirely of fellowship and swapping. The only membership requirement was to show up at a meeting.

At some point someone had the bright idea to reprint some classic and scarce material that most of us wanted but felt that we could never either find or afford. I'd guess this resulted in about 200 reprints mainly of German area material but with a smattering of other items as well. As the reprinting was going on and was pretty popular a few new designs began to creep in. Eventually one or two of us would have new "issues" ready for each meeting. Anybody attending the meeting and wanting a set of the new "stamps" got them gratis. Most were printed digitally on a professional high quality color laser printer on dry gummed stock. Most were comb perforated or rouletted depending on the person producing them. I almost certainly designed more issues than anyone else. Issues were very limited. I'd say the largest run was a couple hundred stamps. There are also at least two different Unrecognized States Philatelic Society cancellations.

It was a blast and we didn't take it particularly seriously. However, we got two lawsuit threats from companies that objected to us creating stamps for their fictional worlds and that kind of took the wind out of our sails. Obviously we were infringing on their intellectual property rights but it was such a small thing and I doubt anybody actually recouped their production investment. Several of the members were elderly and were unable to continue. The rest of us sort of became discouraged and stopped attending for whatever reason.

I tried to revamp the group as a FaceBook group and had over a dozen online members until FaceBook migrated us to their new format. At that point all the members vanished.

I think that about sums it up.

Matt

Hi Matt, and welcome!