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Free ATA Holiday Stamp Checklist Now Available To All

What’s green, leafy and a happy holiday tradition? It’s the American Topical Association’s annual free stamp checklist of mistletoe on stamps! The 2023 free checklist identifies 22 stamps containing mistletoe issued by 15 countries from Australia to Yugoslavia.

Similar to the more than 1,600 topical checklists ATA makes available to its members, this year’s free checklist includes each stamp’s country of origin, date issued, denomination, Scott number, and a description of the stamp.

“ATA Checklists are offered in 48 categories including Aviation, Inventors, Nature, Space, and World Landmarks,” said Jennifer Miller, ATA executive director. “Access to purchasing our many checklists is available only to ATA members, but we enjoy making one specially curated list each year to share with all philatelists. The mistletoe topic won this year’s honors.”

Mistletoe holds a place in multiple cultures including Norse culture, where the plant was a sign of love and peace. In 18th century England, mistletoe became an oft-hung Christmas decoration with a twist: a catalyst for kissing a special someone who might be standing beneath the plant. Today, this semi-parasitic plant is studied by scientists for its medicinal properties to treat anxiety, according to a paper in the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Explore more about mistletoe by downloading your free mistletoe PDF checklist. Go to the ATA website at americantopical.org or click here to take you to the free checklist page.

Healthful balm, holiday aphrodisiac or philatelists’ tool—no matter what you think of mistletoe, ATA’s free mistletoe checklist is sure to bring joy to your holiday season.

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Energize Your Stamp Club with Todd Gantzer

Thursday, December 7, 2023, 7:00 p.m. Eastern

Could your stamp club use some new ideas and energy? Would you like to appeal more to modern collectors and a younger generation? Join us for a Zoom session with Todd Gantzer.

Todd’s presentation includes a brief history of his entry into the philatelic world, followed by some thoughts and suggestions on how to modernize your club and make it more accessible and appealing. This is a unique program of interest to EVERY stamp club in the country. Come and learn how to charge your club with new energy for 2024! You won’t want to miss this!

Todd lives in the Boston area with his wife and 2 dogs. He is dedicated to helping philately evolve into a more accessible hobby that everyone can enjoy. Todd is the president of the Greater Boston Philatelic Society. His personal collection includes squirrels, Straits Settlements and Modern Singapore.

Stephen McGill [right] has replaced Matthew Kewriga on the American Philatelic Society board of directors as a Director-at-Large. Kewriga resigned from the American Philatelic Society Board of Directors, effective Wednesday, October 11, 2023. He cited his need to focus on family and new business. Earlier this year, Kewriga and his family relocated from San Francisco to Virginia, and he started an auction firm, Kewriga Auctions. He held his first public sale at the Great American Stamp Show in Cleveland, Ohio. He had been elected to the Board in 2022.

Under Section 5.7(a) of the APS Bylaws, the APS President appoints a replacement for the remainder of the term, subject to the approval of the APS Board of Directors. McGill’s term, formerly Kewriga’s, ends in August 2025.

The Board confirmed President Cheryl Ganz’s appointment of McGill at its October 19 meeting.

“We’re so excited to have Steve join the APS Board. He’s internationally recognized for his research, leadership, and commitment to sharing his knowledge with others. Steve started and still runs a successful business outside the hobby,” said Ganz on appointing McGill, “He is going to be a great asset for moving organized philately forward.”

McGill joined the APS in April 1998. He is an accredited APS Philatelic Judge and Treasurer of the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors. McGill has also been a regular instructor at the APS Summer Seminar on British Philately.

He started collecting stamps as a child but took a break to raise a family and develop his business. He returned in the late 1990s, focusing on Great Britain, China, Russia, and portions of Scandinavia.

Beginning in 2000, Steve’s interest in modern Great Britain accelerated as an active member of the Great Britain Collectors Club, where he served as President, the Great Britain Philatelic Society and the Royal Philatelic Society of London (Fellow). Chance encounters with a few British modern material collectors in the U.K. and prodding from a local (Colorado) philatelic judge pushed Steve into first exhibiting the Machin definitive series in 2008.

With the help of many philatelic judges, an excellent U.K. dealer, and support from like-minded enthusiasts, the early exhibit has morphed into three displays covering early British postal mechanization efforts (the origin of the Machin), the Denominated portion of the series and the No-Value-Indicated printings (British equivalent of U.S. ‘forever’ stamps). The exhibits have won numerous awards in the U.S. and U.K., including the World Series of Philately Grand Awards and the George Brett Cup. He most recently took the Grand Award at Indypex 2023 for his Britain’s Marvelous Machins exhibit. Steve has also served as a regular instructor on Great Britain philately at the APS Summer Seminar.

Steve’s business experience has been in the Electronics and Software industries, and he has an Aerospace Engineering degree from Georgia Tech and an MBA from U.C. Berkeley. Steve’s wife, Louann, attends many shows with him, and they have three young adult children in California and Colorado.

On the Kewriga Auctions website, Matt Kewriga [right] says he has been collecting stamps since age 8 and won a gold medal at age 17 for his first exhibit, of 2¢ Vermilion Bank Note material. It subsequently won Best Youth Exhibit at several international exhibitions. He also became the youngest philatelic judge ever in the United States at the age of 24. He has worked for Keleher Auctions, Matthew Bennett Philatelic Auctions, and Schuyler Rumsey. He has a degree in industrial engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

“It’s been a pleasure having Matt on the APS Board, and I’m grateful for his service to the APS Board,” said Scott English, Executive Director, “His experiences as a young collector and in the business world brought a unique perspective to the Board. Matt will continue to be a valuable contributor now and into the future.”

There will be no in-person classes or events for the American Philatelic Society’s Summer Seminar 2024, if the proposed 2024 budget is passed by the APS board. That approval is likely. The Virtual Stamp Club has learned that APS executive director Scott English told staff members recently Summer Seminar doesn’t make enough money. It doesn’t lose money, its profit isn’t high enough.

The APS website describes Summer Seminar as “an exciting one-week, once-a-year learning opportunity each June for the APS community, and other collectors and hobbyists. It is appropriate for beginning to advanced collectors, and all courses are led by philatelic experts who are accomplished writers, exhibitors, expertizers, dealers, and specialized collectors.”

It also allowed collectors and others to get to know one another and socialize without the pressure of a stamp show.

“It doesn’t lose money, [but] it doesn’t make much money,” English told VSC.

Summer Seminar was online-only for the past three years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2023 in-person edition was attended by 60 people, but similar seminars get “hundreds when it’s virtual only,” English said.

He believes the APS should focus on building its “online platform.”

“We’ve got to work on leveraging technology and reaching as many collectors as we can,” he said. “I love the traditions of the APS but we cannot let that be an obstacle to moving ahead.”

English said they are looking for other types of in-person programming. He feels it is difficult to produce a Summer Seminar that does both. Some past participants, however, think live streaming is possible for most of the courses. Both sides, however, agree that some of the courses do have a hands-on requirement.

In fact, English says that was a factor in choosing the subjects for the in-person events.

Members of the Mount Nittany Philatelic Society are worried that not having an in-person Summer Seminar will impact their SCOPEX show, which had been held the weekend before SS began. Summer Seminar brought serious philatelists to Bellefonte, Pa., where the APS is headquartered. SCOPEX will now be on its own.

Photographs, from top: Instructor Daniel Piazza, the chief philatelic curator of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

Instructors Diane DeBois and Robert Dalton Harrison show one of their favorite pieces of philatelic ephemera using in their course.

Dr. Justin Gordon discussing Holocaust Philately in an elective.

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Tie for AFDCS Writing Award

Two works tied for first place in the American First Day Cover Society’s Philip H. Ward, Jr., Memorial Award for Excellence in First Day Cover Literature published in 2022. One recipient was Henry Scheuer, for his two-part article in The American Philatelist in November and December 2022, “How the Earliest Collectors Sought Out First Days.” This article also won the 2023 U.S. Stamp Society/Barbara Mueller Award. (He is shown speaking at the Great American Stamp Show 2023 Celebration Banquet. Photo courtesy Martin Kent Miller.)

The other winner was a book, The Connecticut Tercentenary Issue of 1935, by Peter J. LaPlaca and Anthony F. Dewey. Included in the book is a complete catalogue of all known cachets for the issue, Sc. 772.

The runner-up work was the article “Earliest Documented Uses of the Large Bank Note Stamps” by Ralph Nafziger, which appeared in the November 2022 issue of The Chronicle, the journal of the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society.

Although all articles in First Days, the official journal of the AFDCS, are automatically considered for this award, “I find it interesting that none of these works was published in our journal, ” said AFDCS president Lloyd A. de Vries. “Their publication in media not specifically about first day covers shows, in my opinion, the wider acceptance that FDCs are gaining.”

A complete list of past winners can be found on the AFDCS website.

Philip Henry Ward, Jr., began servicing first day covers in 1909. Although an electrical engineer by trade, he wrote on new issues for The American Philatelist, Mekeel’s Weekly Stamp News and The Weekly Philatelic Gazette in the early 20th century.

The American First Day Cover Society is a not-for-profit educational organization. In addition to First Days, the AFDCS also publishes handbooks and catalogues, and promotes the collecting of both modern and “classic” issues and cachets, as well as exhibiting FDCs. It offers awards for outstanding first day cover exhibits and an annual contest for cachetmakers, and is a co-host of the annual Great American Stamp Show.

For more information about the AFDCS, visit www.afdcs.org, e-mail afdcs@afdcs.org or write the AFDCS at Post Office Box 27, Greer, SC 29652-0027.

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Sergio Lugo is the winner of the 2023 Kehr Award “for enduring contributions that help guarantee the future of the hobby.”

Lugo has been a worldwide stamp collector since the age of 7 and is still going strong 70 years later. He added postal history to his collecting pursuits in his mid-30s and soon jumped in as an active member officer and author / editor of several collecting organizations, including clubs throughout the Denver, Colorado area, including the Rocky Mountain Philatelic Library (RMPL), plus national and international groups such as the APS, the Sociedad Filatelica de Puerto Rico, Military Postal History Society and British West Indian Study Group. He’s been involved as an editor and writer for several award-winning articles and publications.

He has been the author or executive producer for 40 of the 42 educational videos produced for the RMPL and other national organizations in the past decade. These often been geared toward educating the philatelists and non-collectors on the eclectic character of the hobby.

Working often with videographer Joe LaNotte, the goal of the video program, which began with no budget, has always been one of providing high quality, managed educational videos free of any restrictions to the viewing public. Lugo said there is no systemic selection process.

“We accept whatever is given to us and spend considerable numbers of hours writing, scripting and developing the narrative, selecting hosts for the presentation, vetting the final product for accuracy and entertainment value and brevity,” Lugo said. “In this later regard we always target 10 to 20 minutes as our time frame, but that is frequently exceeded by the nature of the story.”

Based on data through May 2023, the average yearly views of the RMPL have amounted to 5,300 visits, with an average of 1,500 visits per video. The range of those visits is between 100 and 14,000 visits. Two of the most popular videos have been “Fakes and Forgeries” by Harry Pedersen, of the Arapahoe Stamp Club (14,000 visits); and the endearing story of U.S. Naval postal clerk James Wilkinson (13,000 visits) and his story of Pearl Harbor, the emergence of a Christian missionary organization, his rise to a U.S. Navy commanding officer and his post-war friendship with his Japanese enemy and future Christian missionary Commander Fuchida, leader of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Kehr Award is presented annually by the APS and named for Life Member Ernest A. Kehr. Established in 1991, the Kehr Award recognizes one living philatelist each year who, for a period of at least five years, has demonstrated one or more of the following:

• • Making philately attractive as a hobby to newcomers.
  • Working directly with newcomers, especially young people.
  • Developing and administering programs aimed at recruiting newcomers.

Al Kugel (1930-2022) was associated with many philatelic organizations, but especially Chicagopex, the Military Postal History Society, and the American Philatelic Society. He served as a director of the Chicago Philatelic Society (CPS), and as exhibit chairman and general chairman of Chicagopex. The CPS honored Kugel with its Saul Newbury and Aubrey Berman awards.

A Life Member of the Military Postal History Society, Kugel served as its director, vice president and president. At the time of his death, Kugel had the lowest membership number (434) of any active member.

With his experience in the investment field, Kugel brought financial stability to Chicagopex, considered to be one of the best World Series of Philately venues. As a member of the American Philatelic Society’s finance committee, he advised the APS on its investment portfolio.

Kugel was an expert on military postal history and had more than 100 single and multiframe exhibits in this field. He contributed scores of articles in this area, many of them in the Military Postal History Society Bulletin. He also contributed to The American Philatelist; Collectors Club Philatelist; the Postal History Society Journal; Rossica, the journal of Russian philately; and German Postal Specialist, among others. Kugel and co-author Ed Dubin received the United States Stamp Society’s Barbara Mueller award for the best article in the 2017 issues of The American Philatelist.

Al was an APS accredited philatelic judge and served on CANEJ. In 2005, he was awarded the John N. Luff award for distinguished philatelic research and in 2011 he was elected to the APS Writers Hall of Fame. He was a council member of the American Philatelic Congress, an officer in the Collectors Club of Chicago, a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society London, and he served on the Smithsonian National Postal Museum’s Council of Philatelists.

He also won many single-frame exhibit competitions and did much to popularize that form.

VSC Note: Al was a frequent financial analyst on CNN in the late 1990s and first decade of this century. In a Tiffany Dinner talk, he told how that came about: His office was in the same building as CNN’s Chicago bureau. When CNN needed an expert on economics or finance, a producer would call him, he’d throw on his jacket and head for the stairwell.

Reginald Stafford “Captain Tim” Healy was born in Sydney, Australia in 1892. He fought through World War I with the Australian Army and was part of the Allied forces at Gallipoli.

Reginald Healy came to the United States to learn the oil business in Texas. There, he met his future wife, Margaret, a schoolteacher, and they moved from Gainesville, Texas to New York Coty, where he ran the financial side of a small oil company.

The business collapsed in 1929, and after that, he did whatever he could to survive, his son recalled, including sweeping streets. For a time, he had a radio show called “Captain Tim’s Stamp Club of the Air” on NBC. Healy used his son’s name as his on-air personality.

In the early 1930s, Henry Ellis Harris partnered with the consumer products firm Procter and Gamble to produce a radio show using “Captain Tim” to sell stamps. For a small price (and a couple of box tops from some Ivory Snow detergent), a person could be a stamp collector. Another Harris insight was that collectors not only needed stamps, but they needed a low-priced series of albums to put them in. The radio show that Harris produced and hosted by “Captain Tim” Healy, offered not only stamps but a small album to put them in. Captain Tim’s albums were produced in the millions.

Thanks to Captain Tim’s exciting tales of battle and stamps, thousands, young and old, joined the rank of collector.

Although he was a prominent physician, Dr. Stanley Bierman (1935-2022) worked diligently at assembling one of the world’s greatest private philatelic libraries, putting it to good use as a tool for research on philately’s greatest stamp collectors.

Perhaps even more importantly, Bierman also actively worked to preserve philatelic oral history by initiating a series of insightful video interviews with some of the most important living figures in philately. He is shown interviewing Raymond Weill at AMERIPEX ’86. Without Bierman’s strenuous efforts, much philatelic history and many fascinating anecdotes would have been lost forever.

Bierman’s masterful 2016 summary article on Philatelic Literature, Its Lore and Heritage is available in the Philatelic Literature Review. Furthermore, the surprisingly entertaining and fascinating story of how Bierman’s own philatelic library came to be formed is recounted in earlier PLR articles published in 1984-1985.

Henry B. Scheuer is the winner of the 2023 USSS/Barbara Mueller Award, for his article, “How the Earliest Collectors Sought Out First Days,” Part I and II of which appeared in November and December 2022 issues of The American Philatelist. It was written for the 100th anniversary of modern first day cover servicing.

The award goes to the author of the best article published in a single year of the AP, the monthly journal of the American Philatelic Society. The award is named for the United States Stamp Society (USSS) and for one of its most prominent members, authors, and editors, APS Life Member Barbara R. Mueller.

In 2007, the United States Stamp Society founded the award to promote the USSS, its goals and its mission to the 26,000 members of the APS, an estimated 75 percent of whom collect U.S. material.

Scheuer started collecting United States first day covers in 1959 and began acquiring older material in 1965. Over the last 45 years, he has written many articles, addressed numerous philatelic groups, and has been involved in various aspects of creating and collecting covers. Henry is a long-time member of the AFDCS, as well as the APS, the Collectors Club, and the United States Stamp Society. He is probably the top collector of Sc. 1246 John F. Kennedy FDCs, which went on sale nationwide on May 29, 1964. He has more than 5,000 different cities.

Below, Scheuer receives his award from U.S. Stamp Society president Nicholas Lombardi.

He previously won the Mueller Award for his 2016 article “Kansas-Nebraska Overprint Stamps: Why, Where, and When They Were Initially Sold,” which also won the AFDCS’ Philip H. Ward Jr. Award for Excellence in First Day Cover Literature. He has been awarded that honor two other times and written dozens of articles for First Days, dating back to 1976.

At the end of 1921, the Philatelic Sales Agency was formed, and in 1922 began the widespread coordination and promotion of new stamp issues – allowing for the similarly widespread preparation by collectors of first day covers.

Here is an excerpt from his 2022 article:

“… for our philatelic forebears, collecting first day of issue/usages was an entirely different beast than what today’s FDC collector experiences. The covers shown in Part 1 are almost entirely the work of prominent Washington, D.C. philatelists, because they had the foreknowledge, proximity and physical access to use these new issues as soon as they were available. Today, first day covers proliferate – a very good thing for the many collectors who create them and seek them out to collect. Despite the differences between the earliest first day collectors and modern, the motivations are much the same – to be a part of documenting philatelic history.”

Both The American Philatelist and First Days are benefits of membership in the societies that publish them.

The American Philatelic Society has announced the winners of its Luff Awards, the most prestigious honor the APS can bestow upon living philatelists. They are:

• For Distinguished Philatelic Research: Jerzy W. Kupiec-Weglinski
• For Exceptional Contributions to Philately: Lloyd A. de Vries, and
• For Outstanding Service to the APS: Patricia A. (Trish) Kaufmann

You can read the APS press release, which includes detailed biographies and accomplishments of the winners, here.

The Luff Award was established in 1940 in memory of John N. Luff, APS president from 1907 to 1909, who was considered the most prominent American philatelist of his era.