Dan Ryterband, our speaker for March, brought an astounding array of Civil War postal history material (that were not part of Dan’s eight-frame Civil War exhibit), essentially covering most every philatelic aspect of that period of time.  This included Union and Confederate patriotic covers (including rare foreign destination uses), adversity covers, Confederate Postmaster Provisionals, Unio...

Our speaker for February was Chip Gliedman, who presented a unique exhibit entitled “The USA as seen through Postal History.”  Shown as a large map of the US, the exhibit included an outstanding cover from every state of the union.  Highlights of this exhibit included:  Transcontinental Pony Express cover from San Francisco to Boston (California, 1861); Carson City straight-lin...

Our January meeting featured the popular Members One-Frame Exhibit and we had presentations from four members.  Michael Laurence presented first with his exhibit of the ten cent 1869 issue used on postal stationery.  He noted that there are only 23 different known examples of this issue on postal stationery.  The exhibit started with four unique Lincoln imprint essays on different ...

Bob Rose was our speaker in December on the topic “U.S. Revenues donated to the Philatelic Foundation by the National Postal Museum.” Bob started out with a detailed history of the NPM’s effort to sell the millions of excess revenue stamps it held, including a review of the two Matthew Bennett revenue stamp auctions.  He also showed an extensive listing of the many thousands of stamps donate...

Our November speaker was Wade Saadi, who presented his wonderful exhibit on “Parcel Post Postage Due Postal History.”  Wade first gave us a brief history of the use of Parcel Post Postage Due (PPPD) stamps and how their use spanned from 1913 to the 1920s. He then showed many examples of PPPD stamps used for both domestic and foreign mail. His domestic uses included: bisected stamp (not ac...

Michael Heller was our October speaker on the topic “School and College Advertising Covers.”  He brought about 60 covers that encompassed a wide range of private schools, seminaries, colleges and universities, each showing a picture of the school building and often the surrounding grounds.  The covers were dated between the 1850s and the 1880s. With each school, Michael gave a brief ...

Roger Brody presented on June 11 on the topic “Exploring the Back of the Book.”  While much of the material represented various uses of revenue stamps on their original documents, Roger also brought interesting examples of postage currency and International Reply Coupons. The presentation began with a number of examples of revenue stamps used on railroad stock certificates and other docum...

Our September speaker was Larry Lyons, who presented Part II of his fascinating talk on S. Allen Taylor forgeries of U.S. Carriers & Locals.  Larry started his talk with an overview of the early history of individuals who created forgeries or facsimiles of local and carrier stamps, in order to satisfy the growing interest in stamp collecting.  Apparently, the collecting of these spu...

Our May speaker was Ed Siskin, who gave us a fascinating PowerPoint presentation on “Free Franks”.  Ed first defined the franking privilege and then provided a concise history of such franks. He then went on to show many free franked covers, ranging from the 17th to the 20th century. To help understand 17th century writing, one of the slides showed the various 17th century letters corresp...

Our speaker for April, Henry Scheuer, regaled us with many interesting stories during his presentation on “U.S. Presidential Inaugurations– Washington to Trump.”  During his talk, Henry showed a fair number of covers and/or letters posted or written on the inauguration date of a U.S. president.  Henry first described how he purchased a souvenir sheet from an African country at the N...

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...