At our last meeting of the New York Chapter USPCS on March 9, Dan Ryterband gave a fabulous presentation on his single frame "Civil War prisoner mail" exhibit.  The exhibit focused on prisoner of war mail that crossed the lines through flag of truce exchanges, including covers from CSA prisons that traveled northbound and ones from Union prisons that traveled southbound.  Dan provided u...

At our last New York Chapter USPCS Zoom meeting on February 9, Chip Gliedman gave us a fascination presentation on "Civil War Patriotic Labels and Seals." While many of us are familiar with printed illustrated Civil War Patriotic covers, Chip showed us a great many examples of covers that had an illustrated label or seal used as a form of patriotic sentiment. Many of these labels showed single an...

We had a great group of presenters at our last New York Chapter USPCS meeting, held on January 12. This was our annual Member's Exhibit and no less than 8 individuals showed a variety of fascinating material. Here is a summary of their presentations: Wade Saadi showed a number of covers that were free-franked by U.S. presidents, their widows or by other famous people. A highlight was a cover f...

Henry Scheuer and Ed Siskin were our co-speakers on December 8, on the topic "The Basis For First Day and Earliest Use Dates."   Ed started out by describing the genesis of this project that began in the mid-1970s, including the importance of defining what a first day or earliest documented use actually meant.  He then showed a long list of stamps with designated first days a...

Michael Heller was the speaker at the November 10 (Zoom) meeting of the New York Chapter USPCS on the topic "College and School Illustrated Advertising Covers, 1851-1869." In the presentation, Michael commented on the history of each of the schools and colleges that were depicted on these early envelopes. It was noted that some of these institutions were eventually merged with other schools ...

Henry Scheuer was our speaker at the October 13 (Zoom) meeting of the New York Chapter USPCS on the topic "First Day Covers mailed to Foreign Destinations."  As always, Henry provided us with a fascinating story of the covers he showed that evening, which focused on FDCs sent to rather uncommon destinations. Henry started his presentation with a 65 cent Zeppelin FDC mailed to Peru in 1...

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...