This is the last of a short series intended to encourage exhibiting. I am going to throw away the book, specifically the Manual of Philatelic Judging, and the ever-valuable resource, The New Philatelic Exhibitors’ Handbook by Randy Neil. Although both are worth reading, I am writing from personal experience as a veteran of national and international exhibitions. (I am not a judge.)

In reality, there are only three or four things that matter.

(1) Look at other exhibits and make notes, including the level of the award. What do you think the exhibitor has done well or poorly, and what have you learnt?

(2) Simplicity and readability is a must. They don’t tell you this, but you must assume that the judges don’t actually know everything (or maybe even anything) about your area; that they have not read around it; that they have not read any articles (even if they are yours) you may have had the audacity to send them before the show; and may have not even read your synopsis page. (More on this later, just in case they do read it.) Therefore, you have to explain your exhibit as you would to an interested member of the public; and, since most of the judges are old and don’t see well, everything has to be readable. E.g., fictional illustration:

Illustration 1:

On May 1, 1945, a new system of postal rates, using the Pengö, was introduced into Hungarian usage. Postal regulations came into being which were extremely complex and published in the P.R.T., or Postai Rendeletek Tárja, or Compedium of Postal Regulations, which in turn was dictated on a near-daily or daily basis by the Treasury and the Office of the Prime Minister. There were problems with the supply of adequate quality paper for the printing of stamps, and a private press was commissioned in addition to the Government printing office. The period just preceding May 1, 1945 after the end of World War Two and the progressive east to west occupation of Hungary by Allied forces was largely unregulated, and several local Postmasters issued provisional stamps and cancels to expedite mail. Their inclusion or exclusion from an exhibit of the postwar Inflation Era is quite controversial, some experts regarding them as “forerunners” and some as legitimate components leading up to this era… (Yawn…)

Illustration 2:

On May 1, 1945, new postal rates were published which over the next fifteen months became the subject of an accelerated inflation, reflected in the postal rates. Rates changed a total of 27 times between 1 May 1945 and 31 July 1946, the end of the inflation era, when the Pengö was replaced by the new currency, the Forint. By June and July 1946, inflation had become so rampant that some of the rates only lasted three days before being replaced… (Mmmm… this could be interesting, let’s see the material.)

Illustration 3:

POSTAL HISTORY OF THE WORST INFLATION EVER KNOWN (GUINESS BOOK OF RECORDS, 1999). This unparalleled period began on 1 May 1945 and ended on 31 July 1946. An item costing 1 Pengö (P) as the beginning, cost 4.7 x 1029 P or 4,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 P at the end… (Wow – this sounds like fun!)

(I am cheating… One of these is real, the other two are fictional. Can you guess which is which?)

(3) Your story and the Title Page. There must be a simple, logical story, which aims to fascinate and unfolds on your title page. It helps to direct attention at section or frame numbers where certain material is located. I don’t think that it matters how much you do it. I personally don’t have enough patience to read documents which sound like legal contracts (“Section 1.1(a) subsection b shows the original design or plate proofs.” I prefer “Frames 1-2 show the original designs, etc.”) Keep it relevant and short. If you outline a story on the title page and it becomes hard to follow in the exhibit, the judges became annoyed, because it costs them time. I have never understood why judges only have four seconds or whatever to assess each frame, maybe they should start earlier or finish later, but there we are.

(4) The Page Layout. This is critical because it must as perfect as you can make it. A lot of lip service is paid to research, originality, rarity of material, but we all have a budget to work with, and we can’t all be original researchers. What we can all do, however, is to present a perfect page. By this I mean a computer-generated write-up or at least a gorgeous handwritten or typed write-up with no spelling or grammatical errors (you’d be surprised!), everything symmetrical, the same approach to each page. If you put a little write-up on each page, don’t put it on to top one and the bottom for another. I have always found “embellishments” dangerous. Matting may be imperfect, material may slip from computer created frames, showing “important” material in a different way may lead to the question: why is this more important that the rest, and why are you showing the rest anyway? Simplest is the safest. However, that is certainly a matter of taste.

(5) The Synopsis Page. This is the page that goes to the jury, unless you want to include it to follow the Title page. This is where you blow your horn, tell them the research you have done, how difficult it was, where the stuff is that you really want them to see. Philatelic references can be put either here or on the title page. Do the judges read the synopsis? You bet! The
more rarefied your exhibit is, and the less the judges are to be familiar with it, the more important the synopsis becomes.

Enjoy, don’t be afraid!

The following very experienced members of our Society have very kindly offered to review and critique fledging (or experienced) exhibits. I am most grateful to them. They are