At our April meeting, Bob Rose showed two carousels of New Jersey covers assembled by members of the society. The origin of this was a meeting of Rose, Brad Arch (1944-2000) and a few other members of the society. The bulk of the slides come from the Arch holding and is a tribute to this gentleman. As members will note there is a strong focus upon the 1869 issue, which was one of Brad’s passions. The sales catalog of the Brad Arch holding stated it was the largest and most comprehensive offering of New Jersey postal history to be sold at auction. I am not sure this is completely accurate when compared with the early Hiram Deats dispersal and more recent Steve Rich sales, the last of which provided much material now in the Rose holding, but the Arch sale is the largest in recent years. Brad was an active buyer of New Jersey material for at least three decades and during the 1980s and 1990s seldom lost a desired New Jersey lot.
One of the things that incited attendee comment was the lovely pair of hand-drawn covers banknote covers, which are not included in the leave-behind. A point that Mr. Rose made forcefully is that there are almost no students of the banknote issues today so there is no active pursuit of New Jersey banknote covers. Also of note but not in the leave-behind are the ‘Good Samaritan’ label covers.
