Only 3 Seats Left! – On Friday, June 3, 2016, the Society will host a dinner at 6PM at Michael’s, 24 W. 55th Street in New York. To receive tickets, you must pay in advance ($160 per person).  Please send a check to Mike Plett at 2855 Willowmere Woods Dr, Vienna VA 22180-7080; or by PayPal to treasurer@uspcs.org.  There are only 100 seats for the dinner and more than half have already been paid for, so please reserve your seats now.

Jim Allen (photo) and John Barwis take Grand awards at Aripex and Texpex, respectively. News of other members winners at these shows and at Garfield-Perry below…  

ARIPEX

At the Aripex show the weekend of Feb. 19, our own Jim Allen won the Grand award with his “The First United States 12¢ Stamp Series of 1851-1861.” Congratulations Jim!  And right behind him with the Reserve Grand was Dale Forster with “Australian Colonies – USA Mail”. Gary Hendren won the Single Frame Reserve Grand award with his “St. Louis Pioneer Air Mail – October 4-8, 1911”.  The USPCS Medal was won by Larry Lyons and his exhibit of “Hussey’s Post”.  Multi frame gold medals were taken by Society members Les Lanphear and the “United States Penalty Clause Mail: The Classic Period”; John Birkinbine II with “Pioneer Arizona Area Classics, 1783 – 1870”; Bill Dipaolo with “The Prexie Coils” ; Larry Haber and “The Half-Penny (decimal) Machin”; Alfredo Frohlich and “Colombia, First Perforated Issue, 1883”; and Edwin J. Andrews and “The Life of Jan Christiaan Smuts. Soldier – Statesman – Scholar”.  Quite an array of great exhibits at Aripex from Society members.  


TEXPEX

Our own President, John Barwis, took the Grand award on Feb. 27 with his new exhibit “Carrying the Mail from Victoria.” Matt Kewriga won his second Reserve Grand in two months with “Danish West Indies Foreign Mail: 1748-UPU.”  David Willig won the Society medal for “U.S. 19th Century Brown Postal Markings: Are They Really Brown or Something Else?”  David’s exhibit also won the JCM Cryer Cup for the Best 19th Century U.S. or Confederate Exhibit (See photo). 


GARFIELD-PERRY

The USPCS Medal (and a gold medal) was won at Garfield-Perry’s March Party by Bob Meegan with “United States Domestic Letter Rates, Act of 1792 through the Act of 1872.”  (see photo).  Other members who took home gold medals include Ken Nilsestuen with “Minnesota Territorial Centennial Stamp – 1949”, Roger Rhoads with “Chicago: House of Blues – Chicago Blue Cancellations and Markings on the First Postal Card” and Eigil Trondsen with two exhibits – “Cunard Line: The Ships and the Transatlantic Mail 1840-1867, the Monopoly Years” and “Norway Registered Mail 1800-1951.”

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2016
This spot in the News section is where you will find out which Society members and their Exhibits have done particularly well at recent stamp shows. We will include speakers, those whose exhibits have won Grand, Reserve Grand or Best type in show awards, those whose exhibits have won the USPCS Medal and, for WSP shows, those who have receive a gold medal.

For all winners, please go to the APS site www.stamps.org.

AmeriStamp Expo

The APS Winter Show, in conjunction with the Southeast Stamp Show, took place in Atlanta on Jan. 29-31 and several Society members figured quite prominently there. On Friday, Gordon Eubanks gave a very well-attended and thoroughly enjoyable talk entitled “Exhibiting Techniques: Lessons Learned in the Trenches.” On the exhibiting side, this show features the annual Champion of Champions competition for both single frame exhibits and most popular exhibits, pitting the winners from all WSP shows during the calendar year 2015 against each other. It also has a large open competition among 51 single frame exhibits, and a competition among multi-frame exhibits other than traditional and postal history. Several Society members took part in the SF C of C. Unfortunately, the winner was not a society maker, but you can see the entire palmares, including the SF C of C winner and all those who finished second, at the stamps.org website. In the large, open single frame competition, two Society members took the two Reserve Grand awards (award shown above). Mark Schwartz, with his “Boston’s ‘Paid in Grid’ Cancels on the U.S. Imperforate issues“; and Tim Wait with his “1862 Insurance Tax.” In this competition, because of its size, both the Grand award winner and the two Reserve Grand winners are now eligible for next year’s SF C of C. Good luck to Tim and Mark next year in Reno.

There were several multi-frame exhibits in special categories (not postal history or traditional exhibits), Ed Andrews won the overall Multi-Frame Grand for his “Hitler Youth – The Generations of Lost Innocence.” Bill Schultz won for the Best Postcard exhibit for “Toll Gates and Toll Houses – Their Progression on Postcards.” Congratulations to Ed and Bill.

Sandical

Sandical was held on January 22-24. Congratulations go to Richard Malmgren for winning the Grand award for his “Hawaiian Postal History” exhibit, and to Matt Kewriga, who won the Reserve Grand for “Danish West Indies Foreign Mail, 1748-UPU.” The Single-Frame Grand (and a gold medal) went to Howard Green for “Handstamped Confederate Rates”. Bill Mooz won the Society medal (and a gold medal) with “Newspaper & Periodical Stamps, 1875-1895.” Gold medals were won by Larry Haller for “U.S. Hand Applied Flag Cancellations, 1852-1949”; and H. James Maxwell for “Mail Slips: 1912-1929”.

Sarasota National Stamp Exhibition

During the weekend of Feb. 5-7, the Sarasota show hosted the American Revenue Association, the State Revenue Society and the U.S. Possessions Philatelic Society. Mark Schwartz won the Reserve Grand and the USPCS Medal for his exhibit “The Postal History of Salem, Mass.: Domestic Mail through Sept. 1883 (Act of 1863), Foreign Mail up to UPU” (photo of Mark with Liz Hisey, Show Chair). Other members winning gold medals included Bob Rose for his “New Jersey Stampless Covers: Handstamp Postal Markings 1775-1855; Bill Schultz for “Domestic Rates – U.S.P.O. Acts of 1792 to 1863; Robert Hohertz for “Revenue Imprinted Paper of the Spanish American War Tax Era”; and Ralph Nafziger for “The 3c 1948 Palomar Mountain Observatory Issue.” For single frame exhibits, Bob Rose and his wife Ellen won a gold medal for “Utica, New York’s Handstamped Postal Markings 1798-1855; and Gary Hendren won gold for “St. Louis Pioneer Air Mail – October 4-8, 1911.

Welcome to the new USPCS website!  This is the result of the survey we took early last year and many, many months of design and implementation.  We reviewed several visual themes and navigation schemes to come up with what we feel is a much more attractive and dynamic site and one that will more easily enable you to find what you are looking for…

Key aspects of the new site:

At the top is a brown band which contains easy and direct access to the great majority of content on the site. For example, if you hover over “Society” with your cursor, you will see sub-sections which required two or more clicks on the old website to reach.  Hover over “Resources” or “Stamps & Covers”, and you will quickly recognize how vast an amount of content is on the site.  I suspect that many of you will find information you did not know existed.  Hover over “Members” and you will be able to log in. If you have gone beyond the home page without logging in, you can do that on any page just by scrolling down to the bottom.

Below that navigation band, you will see a “slider” which shows a number of philatelic gems provided by board members and others.  These will change over time.  You can click on a link in the text at the left to learn more about the material shown.  By putting great material there, it will certainly make the home page more attractive. More importantly, it will draw both members and non-members to delve further into the site and recognize the wealth of information the US Philatelic Classics Society has to offer.

Below that, you will see several News items. These will change as necessary to keep you up-to-date on what is going on in the Society.  Some have more information than can be put on the home page and that is accessible through the embedded link.  You can also reach the News section by hovering over “Society” at the top and clicking on the News subsection of interest.

We hope you enjoy the new website and the very large amount of work that went into it, and is still ongoing.

David T. Beals III served the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society as Vice President (1975-76) and as President (1976-80).  From 1970 to 1987 he was a working member of the Editorial Board of our journal, The Chronicle of the U.S. Classic Postal Issues, in which he also published 44 scholarly research articles.  Mr. Beals also was a contributing editor for the American Stampless Cover Catalog, so we think it fitting that the revised edition be dedicated to him.  We believe that support and funding of special projects, including publication of both print and digital research-based literature, website redesign to improve research access and distribution, and the provision of learning tools are all emblematic of David Beals’ long participation in our Society – and are thus a fitting tribute to him.

The grant total was $250K, to cover:
• Redesign and upgrade the USPCS website, including addition of new research data;
• Complete and publish the ASCC
• Seek and archive (at the APRL) the additional assemblages of research material.