These stamps tell Olympics story

Philatelists on Friday threw open an exhibition, ‘Olymphilex India 2012’, giving Bangalore the elusive Olympic connection.

The exhibition, curated by the members of Karnataka Philatelic Society and organised at the Philatelic Museum, General Post Office, here, will feature over 10,000 stamps, postcards, invitations, pictorial cancellations, and souvenir sheets from each Olympic Games, right from Athens in 1896 to Beijing in 2008.

The pieces on display, the organisers said, are from approximately 150 countries, including India, Nepal, Greece, New Zealand, the US, the Isle of Man, Zaire, and Germany. The Greek stamps with the Ancient Greek Olympics as a theme, two 3D stamps depicting athletics and postcards written from the 1904 St Louis Games, 1924 Paris Games, 1956 Melbourne Games, and the 1964 Olympics in Paris are some of the highlights.

“The most valuable stamp on display, perhaps, is the 1896 stamp from the first Olympic Games in Greece. The exhibition truly is a stamp lover’s paradise,” one of the organisers said.

The exhibition features stamps compiled from the collections of 25 members of the Karnataka Philatelic Society. The idea was conceived by Jagannath Mani, a philatelist who has been collecting stamps for 20 years, with the recent years’ collection dedicated to the Olympics.

The organisers said the exhibition took 15 years in the making and that the chief contributors were Dinesh Chandra Sharma and T N Prahlada Rao, both veteran philatelists.
The exposition will be open till August 5 every day, except Sundays and postal holidays, from 11 am to 5 pm.