Our January meeting featured the Member’s One-Frame Exhibit.  As always, it was one of the highlights of the year!  Four of our members brought in world-class exhibits to share with everyone at the meeting.  Here is a brief review of these exhibits: Harvey Mirsky’s exhibit focused on “Packet Mail from Great Britain to the U.S., as covered under the Postal Convention of 1848.”  His exhibit included the earliest known packet letter carried under this convention (which was effective in February,...

Wade Saadi, our speaker on Feb. 9 on the topic “Patriotic Cancels of the American Civil War.”, presented a wonderful array of rare and beautiful stamps and covers.  Using both a PowerPoint presentation and the actual material, Wade showed a great many designs and styles of cancellations and postmarks with patriotic themes used on 1851, 1857 and 1861 issue stamps. These cancels included: stars with shields; flags in circles; shields of bars; straight  line “Union”; and many others.  Highlights...

Roger Brody, our speaker on March 9, presented his fascinating collection of “U.S. Territorial, Possession and Treaty Rate mail at the turn of the 20th Century.”  Roger showed a large array of covers mailed from a very wide variety of locations, including Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canal Zone and Hawaii.  Many of these covers showed registered or special delivery handling. Some of the highlights included: Uses from Oklahoma and Indian Territory; Block of 12 one cent stamps used...

Bob Rose, our speaker for April 13 on the topic “Reminiscences of a Siegel lot describer”, gave a very enjoyable talk about his experiences working for Robert A. Siegel in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  While attending graduate school at Columbia University in the fall of 1965, Bob noticed an advertisement in Stamps magazine for an auction lot describer for the firm of Robert A. Siegel.  Bob noted one of the tests that Siegel used to qualify a potential auction lot describer: Siegel handed him...

Dave Jarrett, our speaker on May 10, presented his fabulous collection of cameo building corner cards.  Dave is well known for developing exceptional postal history collections, so it was not surprising to see cover after cover in extremely fine condition, despite their rarity.  It should be noted that illustrated cameo advertising covers are relatively scarce and highly desirable.  To see over 100 of these covers in very fine to immaculate condition was just awesome! Dave showed us covers fr...

Drew Nicholson and Larry Laliberte were our speakers on June 8, discussing “The Weird, the Wacky and the Wonderful: Some gems from a Dutchess County collection”.  They put together a very interesting PowerPoint presentation that showcased a number of rare and fascinating covers from their collections. Some of the highlights of this presentation included: early free franked letters; a five cent 1847 stamp tied on cover by a Poughkeepsie datestamp; a very ornate illustrated advertising cover fr...

Our speaker for September, Larry Lyons, delivered a wonderful presentation on “Boston handstamps found on Carrier covers – 1849-1863”.  This presentation was based on Larry’s award-winning exhibit of Boston carrier covers, plus some additional material.  Larry first described some of the history of carrier mail and then showed many examples of carrier covers, both with adhesive stamps and handstamps. Some of the highlights of this collection included:  Valentine uses; Penny Post stamp used wi...

Our speaker for October was Tom Corette, who presented on the "Two-Cent Columbian - Post Card and Postal Card Uses".  As one of the leading experts on the two-cent Columbian issue, Tom was able to show a great many examples of this stamp used on both government postal cards and on private cards. Tom first discussed the postal rates in effect in the 1890s regarding both governmental and private cards, which only allowed for a very limited number of situations where the two-cent Columbian stamp...

Michael Laurence, our featured speaker for November, delivered a delightful presentation on “Using Cover Census Data in Philatelic Research."  Michael first reviewed a history of U.S. cover censuses, noting that these studies first focused on great rarities (ninety cent issues) and then moved on to the 1847 and 1869 stamp issues.  He then noted that any good cover census requires four essential elements: chronology (based on rigorous data); comprehensiveness (scans or photos are essential); sort...

Our December speaker was Marvin Platt, who delivered a fascinating PowerPoint presentation on "My Interpretation of the Columbian Envelopes of 1893."  Marvin began the presentation with background information on the Columbian Exposition.  He then described the number of different Columbian envelopes issued, totaling about 107 million. Marvin showed various Columbian envelope essays as well as the approved design.  He also showed examples of various die varieties and essays of envelope waterma...