An Excerpt from THE STAR newspaper 10 March 2006

Here is an excerpt from the Malaysian Newspaper THE STAR dated 10th March, 2006 - a full report on the Malaysia Entry winning the 3rd Prize for the 2004 World Best Maximum Card Competition :

Friday March 10, 2006

Malaysian shines at international stamp event

Stamps
By V. Senthinathan

THE International Competition for the Best Maximum Card introduced in 2004 was held at Southern Paris, France, entitled Maxifrance 2005 from Sept 23 to 25 last year.
Malaysian philatelist Ye Choh San’s card entitled Bullock Cart was awarded the third best maximum card out of 27 participating nations.
Voting for the best Maximum Cards, which started in 2004, attracted some 27 countries and they are Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungry, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Serbia-Montenegro, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland.
All the entries were judged according to the FIP regulations, which take into account the choice of theme, originality, research and maximum degree of visual concordance between the three essential elements in the Philatelic Maximum Card that comprised picture on the card, affixed stamp (linking similar theme) and relevant postmark.

Ye’s winning entry.

This Maximum Card competition is the second to be introduced by FIP after the World Best Maximum Card competition at the World Stamp Championship 2004 in Singapore. Looking at the maximaphily collectors in Malaysia, it sad to note that few collector show interest in this category of philately.
With Ye’s international success, Persatuan Setem Malaysia feels it could unearth more serious collectors in the future.
The three best Maximum Cards were judged on vote count and the winners were Holland’s Royal Kiss of Love and Simplicity by Ronald van der Leeden, which took the first prize, while second went to Cyprus’s Tenderness of Nature – Dolphins by Nicos Rangos. Third prize went to Ye.
Though maximaphily is relatively new in South East Asia, the hobby is gradually gaining momentum because of the introduction of “one-frame” competitive exhibits.
Collecting maximum cards tend to create an interesting “view” disposition, possibly leading one to narrow their collection into “thematic” philately or “maximaphilately” or even “social” philately.
Maximum cards issued worldwide has depicted several hundreds of topics, and forming collection into any of the three categories mentioned above should not pose any difficulty to beginners. Currently there is an influx of collectors from China, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, etc, the competitive challenge is between Europe and Asia.