Vintage look for Jersey Airport

Vintage look for Jersey Airport

This is a rare event - a building being redesigned to look the way it did when it first opened. The fact that the building in question is Jersey Airport's Art Deco 1937 terminal makes it even more of a welcome occasion.

With the bulky and ugly Seventies additions removed the geometric lines of the arrivals building will once again be visible for all to see and appreciate, hopefully for a long time to come thanks to the planning authority arranging for listed status.

Jersey may be one of the smaller airports in the grand scheme of things and so be more readily able to accommodate such a change (not to mention lucky to have the original building still standing) but it is still a great triumph for a beautiful design style, applied to such a commercial building. If only more airports could look like this, travelling might not be such an unpleasant experience. In fact I feel a trip to Jersey coming on right now!

Jersey vintage cars featured on island stamps

Jersey vintage cars featured on island stamps

I actually stumbled across this while searching for another article, but as it combines two of my great loves I thought it at least deserved a place here.

Jersey has a good record of having very attractive and interesting stamp sets and these are no exception. One of the reasons I enjoy collecting stamps is that in many cases they are like little miniature portraits and the care and detail that goes into the designs is, to my mind, absolutely amazing. The artist in this case has done a really first-class job(!).

Jersey also has a good record of preserving classic cars very well, as a result of the warm climate and an island-wide speed limit of 40mph. Both these factors work in favour of the vintage car and so have provided the artist with a nice wide range of vehicles to depict.

Hum! I feel an urge to add to my collection...!

Rare stamp sells for £400,000 on Jersey

Rare stamp sells for £400,000 on Jersey

At the risk of this blog turning into "Eclectic Stamp Collector Monthly" or something I shall just mention in passing this article about the recent sale of another valuable stamp, this time from the Channel Islands.

What this and the previous auctions prove is what many have been saying for some time - stamp collecting is looked upon more and more as a serious investment opportunity with the possibility of continuing increases in stamp values leading to ever greater returns. In these times of economic uncertainty and distrust of some banking institutions many people are turning to stamps as a form of safe investment with an almost guaranteed return, and who can blame them?

Unfortunately such rarefied collections are outside the reaches of this humble blogger's purse (although this hasn't stopped Stanley Gibbons, Britain's premier stamp dealer, sending me an e-mail offering me a rare set of early 20th Century New Zealand stamps for "only £75,000"!) but it is interesting to see how a once-simple pastime, which I enjoy in my own small way, has morphed into a worldwide multi-million pound investment business.