Dick is a graduate of the Naval Academy and served in the submarine service for 22 years, during four of which he was the commanding officer of a strategic, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.
He is the Vice-Chairman of the North Carolina Postal History Commission and has designed the State Postal History section of the Arago website maintained by the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum. In addition, he is a member of the Museum’s Council of Philatelists.
His philatelic life, however, has been centered on the maritime mails and particularly transatlantic mail to and from the United States. Dick’s first book, North Atlantic Mail Sailings 1840-75, was co-authored with Walter Hubbard. It describes the 31 different companies that carried U.S. mails to and from Europe and lists nearly all of their steamships and sailing dates during 36 continuous years.
Since that first effort he has served as the Editor of The Chronicle’s Foreign Mails Section and has written numerous articles for many journals, including three major research works for the Philatelic Congress Books.
Virtually every major award offered in America has come to him, including this Society’s Perry, Ashbrook and Brookman Cups, the USPCS Distinguished Philatelist Award, the APS John N. Luff Award, the American Philatelic Research Library’s Cryer Research Award, and the Collectors Club of New York Lichtenstein Award.
This year the Ashbrook Cup is again awarded to him for his new book, Understanding Transatlantic Mail, Vol. 1, published by the American Philatelic Society. This tour de force of 482 pages renders all of the myriad and complex markings found on transatlantic covers, whether applied in the United States or one or more European countries, perfectly understandable.
Scott is the renowned President of Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries of New York. He started collecting stamps in the fourth grade at the age of 8 or 9 and the next year conducted his first stamp bourse at school. In 1980, he became the head of the stamp department of Christies in New York; in 1991 he joined the Robert A. Siegel firm as a partner with its founder. At Christies and Siegel he has sold upwards of half a billion dollars in philatelic properties, including holdings of Walter Klein, Henry C. Gibson, Sr., Raymond and Roger Weill, Dr. Leonard Kapiloff, The Honolulu Advertiser and Thurston Twigg-Smith. These sales established numerous world records for U.S. items, including the Hawaiian 2¢ Missionary cover, the 1¢ Z grill and the inverted Jenny plate block.
Trepel’s career in research and writing on philatelic subjects has been just as spectacular as his auction career. He is the 1869 Section editor of The Chronicle and has received many of this Society’s awards, including the Neinken and Chase Cups. He was the editor of the Philatelic Foundation’s publication “U.S. Postmarks and Cancellations,” and wrote the definitive work on the City Despatch Post issues as well as studies on the Pony Express stamps.
He sits on the Board of Trustees of the Philatelic Foundation and is a member of the Smithsonian’s Council of Philatelists at the National Postal Museum.
This year’s Chase Cup is awarded to Scott as the lead author of Rarity Revealed: The Benjamin K. Miller Collection, a joint publication of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and The New York Public Library. The first 11 chapters of this of this book brilliantly summarize the classic period of United States philately when private bank note companies rather than the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (which took over the task in 1894) produced all of this country’s stamps. They include discussions of the attempts of these companies to control the variant colors used to produce long runs of the same stamp; the introduction of perforations to easily separate stamps; the introduction of grills to foil the reuse of stamps from which prior cancels had been removed; and the first attempts to produce commemorative postage stamps. Of particular interest is the story of the engravers of postage stamps and other bank note company employees who moved from one company to another as one contract expired and a new company took over stamp production.
Richard C. Frajola is a philatelic consultant to several private clients and auction houses. He has been involved professionally in philately since 1968 and worked for several auction houses until he opened his own. He ran “Richard C. Frajola, Inc.” from 1980 until 1995. His auctions were well known for featuring important collections of postal history. He has published extensively since 1979 including three books in the last two years. He is currently working on a book about the stamps and postal history of Costa Rica to 1900.
Michael O. Perlman is President and C.E.O. of BrandsMart U.S.A., which is a chain of retail stores specializing in electronics, computers, televisions, and appliances. He began collecting stamps with his father at the age of 7. In 1992 he began a specialized collection of the U.S. 10 cent issues of 1855-1868. He is on the board of directors of the Philatelic Foundation as well as the Western Cover Society. He belongs to the APS, United Postal Stationary Society, U.S. Philatelic Classics Society, NY Collectors Club, Cancellation Club, Western Cover Society, and the Scandinavian Collectors Club. Working with the FBI, in 2005 he was instrumental in the recovery of the Charles Starnes’ stamp and postal history collections.
Lee C. Scamp was a systems engineer with the government and then with a not-for-profit company until he retired in 2006. After serving as an Army officer, he began to study the postal history of Hong Kong and the British Treaty Ports. He served as Secretary of the Texas Philatelic Association and received one of the early Distinguished Texas Philatelist awards. He has exhibited various aspects of Hong Kong postal history and has received awards from local through international shows. He has authored three books and numerous articles published in journals. This resulted in an invitation to become a member of the Society of Postal Historians. Research for the fourth book, The U.S. Post Offices in China and Japan,was completed ten years ago but the work was never edited until the joint effort to produce this book.
Their work, The United States Post Offices in China and Japan 1867 to 1874, is the basis of this award. This 242 page study deals with the carriage of mails from different countries to China and Japan until 1867 and with the history of the Pacific Mail Steam Ship Company thereafter. Different chapters examine the Post Office services in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Yokohama, Hiogo, Nagasaki and Hakodate. An appendix details the sailings of the company. Covers and maps provide examples of the service described in the text; they are supplemented with tracings of the markings that are more fully documented in an appendix.
Leonard signing Award at Annual Meeting
He has provided sustained service to national philatelic organizations in the furtherance of philately, to include editing and/or publishing the Confederate Philatelist, April 1966-June 1970; contributing two sections (Kentucky, Chicago) for the forthcoming edition of theAmerican Stampless Cover Catalog; contributing the sections on the general issues, essays and proofs for the new Confederate States of America Catalog and Handbook. In addition, as a philatelic publisher, he has produced 12 separate titles in one or more editions each, including such seminal works as The Postal History of Indiana, Starnes’ United States Letter Rates to Foreign Destinations, Ken Rowe’s Forwarding Agents, Leutzinger’s Handstamps of Wells, Fargo & Co. and Williams’ California Town Marks 1849-1935.
But Leonard Hartmann’s most distinctive service to U.S. philately probably lies in his commercial identity of “the Philatelic Bibliopole” (a term defined by Webster as “a dealer especially in rare or curious books.”) When he began his business in the 1960s, there were few U.S. dealers left who dealt in philatelic literature and few if any besides Leonard Hartmann who actually bought and stocked multiple copies of a new book, or publicized literature in a systematic manner. It would not be an exaggeration to name him one of the most positive U.S. influences on philatelic literature in the past 40 years.
Leonard Hartmann has made exceptional contributions to U.S. philately, as a researcher, author, publisher and supporter of philatelic literature and the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society is pleased to formally recognize him as a Distinguished Philatelist.
Although he collected world-wide stamps as a youngster, Van Koppersmith didn’t take up stamp tongs seriously until 1978. He started by concentrating on used U.S. classics, from the 1847-1869 period, but ultimately moved to postal history. He is now an active student and collector of Alabama and Mississippi postal history, as well as Philadelphia maritime postal history, with significant collections as well of stampless transatlantic, way, ship, steam and steamship mail and Baltimore postal history.
Van has been commendably generous in showing his material and sharing his knowledge. He began exhibiting in 1989, and has regularly won gold medals; most recently, his exhibit of “Mobile, Alabama: Outside the Union” was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2007 Garfield-Perry March Party. He has also shown single frames at The Royal Philatelic Society London and at MonacoPhil 2006. He is a seasoned author, with articles in the Chronicle, Collectors Club Philatelist, Confederate Philatelist, the Pennsylvania Postal History Bulletin, the Opinionsseries of the Philatelic Foundation and the Classics Society’s 1851 Sesquicentennial volume; another article is awaiting publication in the American Philatelist. Van has also been a welcomed and impressive speaker at local clubs, national stamp shows, and at meetings of the USPCS, the Confederate Stamp Alliance and the Collectors Club of New York.
Van served as State Editor for Alabama and Mississippi in the 5th edition of the American Stampless Cover Catalog, is Alabama State Editor for the forthcoming edition of theConfederate States Catalog and Handbook, and is the responsible coordinator for the National Postal Museum’s State Postal History Registry for the states of Alabama and Mississippi. He oversaw the practical aspects of the transfer of the American Stampless Cover Catalog to the Classics Society in 2004, driving over 1500 miles to secure the many boxes of material and spending countless hours sorting through and categorizing it into a usable classification. He continues to devote extensive time on the catalog, as Editor of the forthcoming 6th edition.
He has also volunteered his time and abilities as a leader. He served as Vice-President of the Classics Society from 1992-96, and as President from 1996-2000; as a Past President, he has continued as a Board member in ex-officio status. He was honored with the Society’s Brookman Cup in 1999. Van was Advertising Manager for the Confederate Stamp Alliance from 2000-2004, and as its Treasurer from 2004 on. He has also served on the Council of Philatelists of the National Postal Museum since 2002.
In recognition of Van Koppersmith’s exceptional and sustained contributions to philately, the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society is pleased to honor him as a Distinguished Philatelist.
