Dear Comrades,
Talking to philatelists, it appears that the rarer an
object is the more interest in possessing it. The “presentation pack” is
one such sought-after philatelic artefact which not many people are
aware of.
“Presentation packs” are complete sets of
philately material issued by the Philately Division of the Department of
Posts, India, said Vidya K. Baglodi, a Mangalore-based philatelist and
numismatist, who has collected 25 “presentation packs”
She
said that “presentation packs” could be sent as gifts to people abroad
as they had visuals and information about India. They contained
different combinations of four stamps, cancelled first day covers
(FDCs), and an information sheet (the brochure), all within a file or
folder. The contents and the folder were all based on a theme and
coordinated.
Citing an example, she said that the
“presentation pack” on the Second Indo-African Summit 2011, which had a
miniature sheet, a cancelled FDC, and a brochure, all with the elephant
theme, was good to send as gifts to friends abroad.
Her
collection of “presentation packs” has themes such as Rashtrapati
Bhavan, heritage railway stations, the Buddha, 75 years of the Reserve
Bank of India, festivals of India, textiles of India, and the First War
of Independence.
Her collection of “presentation
packs” began with an initial bunch of packs she spotted in Coimbatore.
Then, a friend gave her five packs and now she has 25 “presentation
packs”.
She said that it was difficult to collect
such presentation packs. It was difficult to find the right information
on how many packs had been issued and also because not all post offices
issued them. There was so much the Postal Department had done and people
do not know about it, she said, about the packs which have been priced
between Rs. 50 to Rs. 100.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Mangalore/article3290575.ece
