Dan Ryterband was our speaker for March, with a fabulous showing of “The 1847 issue.” Dan’s talk started out with many single five and ten cent 1847 issue stamps, all 4-margin copies with a large variety of interesting cancels, including  the scarab of St. Johnsbury, VT. There were also many different shade varieties, including six orange-reds and a single and pair of the rare red-orange shade ...

Michael Heller was the speaker for February on the topic: “Large Banknotes to Foreign Destinations.”  At the start of his talk, he described the development of the Universal Postal Union in 1875 and the applicable rates from the U.S. to foreign destinations for both covers and postal cards As the Large Bank Note stamp period spanned 1870 to 1890, the majority of covers shown reflected the UPU r...

Our January meeting featured the popular “Members’ One-Frame Exhibit”, which garnered support from a fair number of our members, as follows: Wade Saadi showed a frame of cancels on 3¢ 1851 covers and stamps, selected pages from his larger holding called “Struck on Stamps.” Notable items were the earliest year-dated handstamp (Sonora, California from December, 1851), a lemon-yellow cancel, a for...

Larry Lyons was our speaker for December on the topic “S. Allen Taylor forgeries of U.S. Carriers & Locals.” It would be an understatement to say that our members were astonished by the depth and breadth of Larry’s collection of material created by the most prolific forger of Carrier and Local Post stamps! Larry began his presentation by providing us with background information on S. Allen ...

Our speaker for November was Michael Laurence, with a wonderful PowerPoint presentation on “1869 Proofs and Essays, with a focus on the 10 Cent Issue.”  Michael first reviewed the definitions of proofs and essays and also discussed the Scott catalog taxonomy. He then showed the different large die proofs of the 1869 issue, followed by the small die proofs from the Roosevelt album.  The 1869 pro...

Roger Brody was our speaker on October 9, on the topic “Embossed Revenue Stamps Revisited.”  After a brief historical review of the use of revenue stamped paper, Roger showed us a fabulous array of rare embossed U.S. revenues ranging from the mid-18th century to the mid-1800s. Roger noted that the first use of revenue stamped paper in the U.S. occurred in Boston in 1755.  He displayed a Boston ...

Henry Scheuer, our June speaker, gave us an intriguing talk on his efforts in “Creating the Unofficial City FDC Database” After reviewing the history of similar database development, he got into some of the nitty-gritty issues involving the gathering of data for this database. Henry noted that this Excel database, which currently spans the years 1922 to 1931, has seven columns of information an...