Introduction

This catalog attempts to be complete. Note the use of the word attempts. We know that completeness is dependent upon the definition of the field and the moment in time. In defining the field we have tried to track down every known stamp, stamp variety, cancel, meter, stationary, charity seal, Cinderella item, local post label and cachet that relates to the sport of ice hockey. This is our definition of the field and it is admittedly very broad. We have tried to include everything we can think of. If something is not in this catalog it is probably because we were not aware of it, and not because we did not think it fit the field. We have included all the "sand dunes" issues. We make no moral judgments in this catalog, we just try to reflect the reality of the ice hockey philatelic field. This catalog will be updated as new material becomes available.

In our attempt to be complete we have also restricted ourselves to the philatelic side of ice hockey. We have not attempted to give an overview of all the contests commemorated. When listing the item we have tried to include a reason for its being issued. But, we have not gone into any details of the contest, i.e., who won, the order of finish, who scored goals, etc. A brief list of the major events and their location is included later for those who want to look for undiscovered ice hockey philatelic items.

We have also taken some liberties and electronically enhanced, altered or adjusted some items, especially the covers. The name and address of the person receiving the cover has been blocked out. Perhaps they would not want their name displayed and this information contributes nothing significant to the study of philatelic ice hockey. The cancels were also electronically enhanced. Some cancels were so poor to begin with that scanning them made them almost unreadable. Stamp details were brushed out to try and highlight the cancel and not the stamp. At times this has left a peculiar looking image.

Avoided are any references to the established catalog numbers, e.g., Scott's, Michel's. The reason for this is that we are unclear about what rights these publishers hold and what our liabilities would be if we used the numbers. We have used these catalogs for reference purposes and as such we do acknowledge them in the bibliography at the end of this introduction. Since we could not use our "competitions" numbers we came up with our own scheme.

The format of our numbering scheme is as follows:

country code - date code - type code - sequence number

We decided to go with a catalog number that meant something as opposed to a pure sequential number because the meaningful number is more representative of the other numbers in the cataloging business. For example, the Scott use of C for air mail and B for semi-postal or the Michel use of A and B suffixes to denote perforated and imperforate varieties.

First a three-letter country designation, usually the first three letters of the countries name. If there is a repeat here than we take another unused combination of letters that approximate the countries name and keeps the listing alphabetic. Very arbitrary.

Next we have the date code of the item. This can be the first day of issue for a stamp or stationary, the date of a cancel for a postmark or a meter. If part of the date is not known then 0's are substituted. The format of the date code is yyyymmdd where yyyy is the four digits of the year, mm a two-digit month field and dd a two-digit day field. We used the four digits of the year because the year 2000 would be represented by 00 if we used a two-digit format and that would correspond to a no year entry. As mentioned above we hope to be around updating this catalog in the year 2000 so a preparation for that was in order.

The next field is a type code. The type code can be one or more of the letters shown in the Type Code table. A single letter by itself is self explanatory. However, certain items need to be described by combinations of letters, e.g., a bandy stamp would be of type "as," a first day cover on an ice hockey cachet would be "fk."

The last field is a sequence field. If the first three fields are identical then this field will break the tie. This field starts at 01 and runs to 99. It is conceivable that there could be 99 varieties from one country in one day, but not likely. (On the other hand, with the stamp issuing policies of some countries, e.g., stamp, imperforate, collective sheet, souvenir sheet, etc., it might not be so unlikely).

There are two major, world wide events in ice hockey: the Winter Olympic Games and the World Championships. In some years the Olympic Champion has also been the World Champion. There are also various Groups within the Championships. The A Group is the highest and this is the group that we summarize in our tables but philatelic material has been issued for Group B, Group C and junior Hockey events.

Ice hockey was played in the 1920 Olympics and has been played in the Winter Olympics since they were started in 1924. There were no Olympics in 1940 or 1944 because of World War II. In 1994 the Winter Olympics were brought out of synchronization with the Summer Olympics and there was only a two year gap between the XVI Winter Olympics in 1992 and the XVII Olympics in 1994. The Olympics Table below gives a brief overview of the ice hockey contests.

The Ice Hockey European Championships have been held in one form or another, on and off, since 1910. This Championship contest eventually evolved into the World Championships and a brief summary of the years and locations is given in the Ice Hockey Championships Table.

We are always open to input from anyone. To encourage input from our readers we make the following offer. Anyone submitting a new item for inclusion, correcting a matter of fact or expanding data on an existing item will be listed as a contributor in all subsequent updates and reissues of this catalog. Comments on appearance are welcome but will not be acknowledged.