David Jarrett, our guest speaker for January, showed the Lincoln illustrated covers from his holding of interesting illustrated covers.  These were among the items used to illustrate the Abraham Lincoln Illustrated Envelopes book by Dr. James Milgram.  Of the 69 covers shown, four bore labels (2 beardless), 3 were embossed beardless, while 32 other beardless examples included six rail-splitter and seven combinations with Hamlin.  One was the fabulous clever alchemist design.  There wer...

Our speaker for February, Harvey Mirsky, gave us an entertaining and informative presentation on 1847 cross-border usages with Canada. His talk covered the various postal rates involved during the 1847 to 1851 time period, including both the U.S. and Canadian portions. Harvey's covers illustrated the five cent and ten cent usages to Canada, plus several very rare examples of these stamps used from Canada to the U.S. Many different rate combinations were shown, including a unique example rated do...

Mike Heller, the speaker for March, gave a presentation on illustrated circular mail (which could have been retitled "Junk Mail of the 1800's"). The talk began with a review of the postal laws in effect prior to 1845, with some examples of early circulars. As the change in postal rates in 1845 introduced lower rates for circular mail, this served to increase the number and variety of printed matter entering the mail stream. Mike showed many examples of illustrated circulars, many depicting build...

Ed Epstein was our April speaker and he delivered a very informative talk on early U.S. Official Mail. Among the many interesting covers shown that evening were an Alexander Hamilton free frank of 1791; James Monroe's frank as President; and John Adam's frank as an ex-President. Ed also passed out examples of military mail, patriotic usages; free franks of senators and congressmen; and Confederate usages. Other items included covers with official stamps and stamped envelopes.    

                         Our June guest speaker, Larry Lyons, discussed Locals and Carriers Fakes and Forgeries, the subject of his new three-volume work that won the Classics Society’s Chase Cup.  He began by showing the first Scott catalog that illustrated locals (1879) together with the Scott pamphlet of the same era, noting every illustration was a forgery.  Some four or more are still found in the l999 Specialized!  Attached are two pages from the Scott albums of about 1880 showing the S...

Gerald Moss, our speaker for September, gave an interesting and unusual talk on "Plate Material for the First and Second Issue Stamps". As opposed to a discussion on the aspects of "plating" stamps, Gerald's talk focused on the actual material used to prepare the printing plates. Much of the discussion concerned the manufacturing process of the steel used to make the steel dies and plates, which were used in the printing of early stamps. He also discussed stamps that showed plate cracks and how ...

  The speaker at our October seminar was Ken Kutz, whose topic was Rocky Mountain mining. Ken showed us a nice variety of covers related to mining, ranging from beautiful advertising covers to very rare express covers. This included covers from the California Society of Pioneers, a suede gold bag that went through the mails with eight ten cent greens and a number of illustrated covers printed in the West. He noted that his collection included all but one of the 130 recorded Calif...

  History of Expertizing and Catalog Listings—Three Coins This presentation focused upon several major covers—the 1860 90¢ Armitage cover, a 30¢ 1869 cover sold by Ivy, a 90¢ National cover,  the controversial Counsel Klep 5¢ Jefferson cover, a $4 Columbian cover, a 28¢ Blackjack cover to Ceylon and a catalog listing in the American Stampless Cover Catalog. Several of these were examples of analytic write-ups made for the items at the time they were submitted for expert certificates.  This...