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.