[press release] [click on any of the pictures for larger versions]
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.