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...

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...

Our May presenter was Dan Ryterband, who delivered a wonderful talk on “Mails via Lake Champlain.”  His exhibit demonstrated the various ways mails transmitted by water evolved prior to 1870 on this important lake, which was the major communication link between Montreal, Canada and the eastern U.S. Dan’s exhibit was divided into three sections: the Prologue (1759 to 1817); the Steamboat era (18...

Chip Gliedman was our presenter on April 10, on the topic “Civil War Patriotic Labels.”  Chip brought his very extensive collection of Civil War period covers, each of which had a colorful patriotic label attached.  He noted that these covers were relatively hard to find, with a scarcity of about 100:1 compared to regular patriotic covers. These labels featured many different types of designs, ...

Wade Saadi was our speaker on February 13 on “19th Century Cameo Advertising Covers.”  He brought an impressive accumulation of over 100 very attractive illustrated cameo covers, whose condition reflected Wade’s fastidious taste. Wade showed covers grouped according to the following subjects: merchants and manufacturers; ships, trains and stables; professional services; cigars, wine and liquor;...