XI PPCP MEETING
Hotel Alchymist
Dear supporters of philately and visitors of the Prestige Philately Club Prague website,
on 14th December 2023, the 11th PPCP meeting was hosted at the Grand Hotel Alchymist. The meeting was opened with an introductory welcome speech by the President of the Club, JUDr. Tomáš Mádl, who acquainted the members with the course of the membership meeting and introduced the distinguished guests, among whom were: PhDr. Ing. Tomáš Hejda, PR and media representative of the PPCP, owner and director of company PR Mollo; Jan Rihak, owner, and director of the graphic and design studio Eternia; Dušan Martinček, professional Prague-based photographer and Mgr. Ing. Jan Berr, doc. MUDr. František Vorel, CSc. and Radek Novák – the soon-to-be accepted members of the Club. The program of this meeting was very demanding and therefore the Club tradition was broken, due to which the spouses of the Club members did not attend the last, Christmas meeting of the year.
The most important point of the meeting was the election of the new PPCP Committee, where firstly RNDr. Pavol Lazar explained the election mechanism. In this regard, Dr. Lazar stressed that the Club’s Articles of Association published in the Federal Register will be followed, including the establishment of an election committee, and emphasised that the current Committee consisting of JUDr. Tomáš Mádl, Ing. Vít Vaníček, Mgr. David Kopřiva, Mgr. Jiří Střecha (Postal Museum) and RNDr. Pavol Lazar is valid as the 5-year term of the Committee ended on 28th October 2023. The President of the PPCP remains JUDr. Tomáš Mádl based on his 10-year mandate. Therefore, only four members of the Committee were elected, whose task in the future should be mainly to modify the Articles of Association, as well as to establish new governing structures, i.e. the Exhibition Committee and the Auditor, and to approve new members.
The new members of the Committee became Messrs RNDr. Pavol Lazar, Ing. Vít Vaníček, Mgr. Jiří Střecha (Postal Museum) and Ing. Martin Němeček, who will also act as the Club’s administrator. The newly elected Committee agreed that committees (e.g. working committees) may be established. The first working committee was the so-called Exhibition Committee, which will judge the displayed exhibits at the exhibitions that the PPCP will be participating in and organizing. The first members of the Exhibition Committee were elected Messrs: Mgr. David Kopřiva, Marek Vrba and Ing. Vít Vaníček. The Club committee also established the post of Auditor, who after the election became Ing. Radoslav Míšek, Ph.D. The role of the Auditor will be to oversee the distribution of the Club’s finances and to communicate with the Club Administrator. The Club Committee also clarified the possibility of cumulating functions – namely that a committee member can be a member of the Working Committee, i.e. a Committee member cannot be an Auditor. The Secretary of the Club remained Ms. Hana Fenclová.
The Club Committee approved the established pattern of Club meetings – two business meetings in spring and September, and one festive, “Christmas” meeting accompanied by the PPCP members’ spouses. The informal meetings at the Aromi Restaurant, which are held on the last Thursday of each month, remain.
The second key point of the 11th meeting was the assessment of the Biennale 2023 – Treasures of World Philately II, which took place at the Municipal House in Prague from 28 October 2023 to 5 November 2023 to considerable attention from the media and the general public. The evaluation included presentations by PhDr. Ing. Tomáš Hejda (media coverage of the exhibition and plan for 2024), Ing. Martin Němeček (economic coverage of the exhibition) and Jan Rihak (graphic coverage of the exhibition).
According to the President of the PPCP, the Biennale 2023 was a successful exhibition, considering the good attendance, PPCP’s representation, the location and accessibility, distance to the Palladium department store, and terms of the contract with the Municipal House. M Mádl and the management of the Municipal House have reached a tentative agreement on future cooperation.
According to Ing. Vít Vaníček and Mgr. David Kopřiva, a more colourful story of philatelic rarities should be presented more, because the new generation has no relationship with philately and shows little or no interest in it. In this regard, Jiří Kraus expressed his views to integrate QR codes into exhibits to make them more appealing to younger visitors. Ing. Petr Sobotka spoke in favour of parameterising the exhibition, i.e. determining the scope of the content, the ratio of images to written text, the rarity description (description vs. catalogue number), the unification of exhibit titles, etc. The graphic designer, Mr Rihak, was in favour of integrating the exhibition plan into the exhibition leaflet, as it was done in Biennale 2020, for the sake of easier orientation at the exhibition and for better localization of searched philatelic rarities by visitors.
Another equally important point of the 11th meeting was the inauguration of the new members, which took place according to established customs, i.e. signing of the Charter of Foundation of the association, pinning of the PPCP badge, handing the certificate and a photo shoot. The new members of the PPCP are Mgr. Ing. Jan Berr, whose philatelic interest is the postal history of the Czech lands, the classical period of Austria and the Old Italian States; doc. MUDr. František Vorel, CSc., who is mainly interested in the newspaper stamps of Austria, Austria’s 1st series, important stamps of the classical period and the Czechoslovak Republic 1918-1938 stamps; Radek Novák, whose main philatelic hobby is Czechoslovakia in the period 1918 – 1992, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Austria, and Germany until 1945, philatelic literature and investment philately.
At the very end of the 11th meeting a general discussion took place during which the Club Members voted in favour of keeping the 2-year cycle of the Biennale. Furthermore, Jiří Kraus noted the year 2025, during which the elections to the Board of the Union of Czech Philatelists will be held, which could eventually relate to the possible organisation of the World Philatelic Exhibition Praga 2028 (if the UCP obtains the relevant permissions from FIPA and FEPA). The UCP and PPCP could cooperate more in organising the World Philatelic Exhibition Praga 2028, which would strengthen the relations between the organisations.
The date of the following meeting was set for mid-April 2024.
for the PPCP website Mgr. Petr Jezdinský with notes by Hana Fenclová