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Thank you

Dear Steve,

I just wanted to write and thank you for all the good work you are doing.

As its Friday evening, I took a longer look at the site and was particularly impressed by the breadth of Jamie Smith's collections- not just South Africa but remarkable Military material; also his collection of Persia is impressive.

I also enjoyed your biography of Ralph Putzel. When I started my SWA collection, his book on SWA was a huge catalyst and remains so; we have been using it to work on a fantastic SWA postal history collection for our Spring 2021 Auction.

I then was a founder subscriber to his Encyclopaedia of Southern African Post Offices and bought extras for other collectors, all of whom enjoyed it very much. Alex Visser has done terrific work in taking this forward. It is remarkable learning of Ralph Putzel's life and his achievements and trials. We all owe a great deal to Ralph Putzel and Alex Visser for this admirable work. Thank you for your biography.

Wishing you continuing success.

Adam Cooke   

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your Letter to the Editor, the first we have received and hopefully, also the first of many more.

The SAPC was created as a on-line meeting place for collectors of southern African material. As founding members, Jamie and I (but mostly Jamie) contributed material that we had in order to kick-start the Display and Forum sections. Your Letter to the Editor is a part of that process, namely members making contributions to the life-blood of the Club.

So, thank you, Adam, for being pro-active, participating and giving the Club extra forward momentum. We are dependent on member contributions. We cannot do this alone! Member contributions are desperately needed!

I have documented this elsewhere but in 1990 I was living in the UK and homesick. I began collecting stamps again after an absence of many years. I concentrated on South Africa but soon tired of mint stamps which were expensive and less interesting to me than those with postmarks of the places I had known when living in South Africa. Ultimately, postmarks lead me into collecting Cape postal history. When it came to furthering my knowledge of postmarks, Ralph Putzel's reference books were a beacon of light in the dark. 

The nice thing about an on-line biography is that it can be easily updated with new information and images as they become available. On three occassions Prof. Alex Visser has supplied substantial new information that has necessitated my re-writing of Ralph's biography.  Long may that disruptive process continue. Readers who have information, covers and ephemera about Ralph are please asked to send copies to me. Alex also arranged the introduction to Ralph's son, Robert, who provided much of the personal detail of his father's life. So, a BIG thank you to Alex!

While I am the guy who started the web site, it would not have achieved this shape or form without the encouragement of Bob Hill and the contributions and enthusiasm of Jamie Smith in the first instance. Having started it, among the first to respond were Yiannis Lazarides, Ian Paterson, Tony Howgrave-Graham, Simon Peetoom, Bas Payne, Mike Berry, Alex Visser, Cedric Roche, Jim Findlay, Dave Young, Peter Vogenbeck, Harald Zierock, Peter Thy and many others. Last but defintely not least, this website exists solely because of the contribution of my dear wife Andrea who is our resident techie, the eminence grise whose hand is everywhere and nowhere.