GREEN BAY PHILATELIC SOCIETY 2016 Baltic Terrace, Green Bay, WI 54311
President:
Vice President:
Secretary:
Treasurer:
Darryl Ruprecht
Dave Burrows
Ray Perry
Kirk Becker
WHERE:
WHEN:
TIME:
PROGRAM:
468-6348
468-7566
469-8925
680-1063
Vol. 33
No. 6
Editor:
Publisher:
June, 2013
Ray Perry
Darryl Ruprecht
469-8925
468-6348
JUNE MEETING – Welcome Summer.
BROWN COUNTY SENIOR CENTER
June 20, 2013 (third Thursday of every month)
Open 7:00 pm, (no business meeting in June, July, and August)
Silent Auction
Reminder: We need volunteer members to pick up a key from the Senior Center by 4:00 pm on the day of the
meeting. June’s volunteer is Dave Burrows.
May Meeting
President, Darryl Ruprecht, called the meeting to
order and introduced returning member, Bob Mahn.
Bob was a member years ago and has rejoined the
club. Bob enjoys collecting U.S. stamps. Members
took turns introducing themselves and stating what
their collecting preferences are. Welcome Bob.
Old Business:
Juniors: The St. Matthew mini course day did not
work out for stamp collecting. There was not
enough space for all the available mini courses and
stamp collecting sadly was one of the courses having
little interest so it was cancelled. The organizers
said that the teachers were interested and that one or
more of them might ask us to come to their
individual classes. We committed to do this in the
future if asked. In the meantime Ray has been in
contact with former GBPS member Jay Van
Zeeland. Jay is heavily involved with the Boy
Scouts and has contacts with the Girl Scouts. Jay is
going to look into how and when GBPS might be
able to present to either of these two groups.
New Business:
Membership Report 2013: Ray gave the annual
membership report. Our membership shows a net
gain of two members as of May 1, 2013. Since then
we have added one new member and have a
commitment from one of last year’s members to pay
his dues in the near future.
Thank You: Bob Petersen commented on the
newsletter and thanked yours truly for the work put
into it. Thanks Bob, for your kind thoughts and
recognition. I would like to take this opportunity to
suggest that anyone with an idea for a newsletter
article let me know about it, or feel free to draft up
an article and submit it for use in a future newsletter.
Elections:
Randy Younger speaking for the
nominating committee presented the following
nominations for our 2013/14 officers:
President:
Darryl Ruprecht
Vice President
Dave Burrows
Treasurer
Kirk Becker
Secretary
Ray Perry
Current president, Darryl Ruprecht, called for
nominations from the floor 3 times. Since there
were no nominations from the floor, it was moved
and seconded to close the nominations and cast a
unanimous ballot for the slate of officers proposed
by the nominating committee. The motion carried.
I would like to editorialize a bit here on how you can
help your club officers. We have a very active club
with members showing up to help with all of our
projects including Einstein Project, Junior Activities,
show activities (set up the room, move dealers in and
out, lunch run, publicity, stamp purchases, and take
down the room), doing programs, buying and selling
in the club silent auctions, and participating in the
club programs (show and tell, way out topical night,
and philatelic scavenger hunts). So, how can you
further help? If you have an idea for a club program,
please let one of the club officers know about it. It
might take a month or two to work it in, but we
would love to hear new ideas for programs. One
that came up several months ago was written up in
Linn’s by Janet Klug. It was noticed and proposed
in our club by Clete Delvaux. It would be called
“pretty ugly night” and each member would bring a
stamp from their collection that they thought was a
very beautiful stamp and one that they felt was very
ugly. I propose that we try this activity at the
September meeting. I don’t know if there are any
rules to the activity. As a starting point lets limit it
to 1 pretty stamp and 1 ugly stamp mounted so that
they can be passed around at the meeting. Be sure to
identify your display. There will be no newsletters
until September, but I wanted to let everyone know
so that they can think about what their concept of
pretty and ugly is in terms of the philatelic world. I
will put a reminder in the September newsletter.
May Program:
auction.
in 123 years the Netherlands has a male monarch. I
guess I just found that little piece of history
amusing. Not that the write up in the newsletter had
anything to do with it, but as soon as I called
attention to it they had to go and end the streak .
At any rate you are all up to date on the current
reigning monarch in the Netherlands. When will the
first Dutch stamp come out commemorating the new
king?
Last month I started discussing U.S. stamps. We got
through the “1870-88 Bank Note” issues. Following
these was the “1890-93 Small Bank Note” issues.
The Harris catalogue says this is the simplest of the
19th century definitive issues. They were all printed
by the American Bank Note Company. There are
very few printing varieties. Most of them are not
cost prohibitive in used condition. Shown below are
a couple of the Small Bank Notes.
the May program was a silent
Summer Program
Several years ago the Green Bay Philatelic
Society decided to eliminate the business
meeting part of our monthly meetings for the
summer months unless there was some urgent
business to attend to. That does not mean that
we will not have a meeting. There will be silent
auctions at each of our summer meetings along
with fellowship and socializing. Please attend
the summer meetings and bring a guest. It is a
great opportunity to catch up on philatelic news
and events from friends in the club. I will send
post card reminders of the meetings in July and
August. Once again, Jim and Millie Stearns
have donated the post cards. Thanks to Jim and
Millie for their generosity.
Scott #221
Scott #224
Following the “Small Bank Notes” came what is
known as the first U.S. commemoratives, “The
Columbians”. This set was issued to commemorate
the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by
Columbus. It was issued at the 1893 World’s
Columbian Exposition in Chicago. There are 16
different denominations. The Columbians were to
be sold for only a period of one year. All of the
stamps went on sale January 2, 1893 with the
exception of the 8 cent stamp which went on sale
March 3, 1893 to meet the new reduced registration
fee. That stamp is shown below:
Ray’s Ramblings
Over the past several months I have been writing a
little bit about how I got started collecting stamps
and the evolution of that beginning to where I’m at
today. Back in the March newsletter I talked a little
bit about my Netherlands collection. In that write up
I mentioned that there has not been a male monarch
in the Netherlands since King William III died in
1890. Well, shortly after that I saw somewhere that
Queen Beatrix was stepping down as the queen of
the Netherlands and would be replaced by her son,
Willem Alexander. This occurred on April 30,
2013. So, for whatever it is worth, for the first time
Scott #236
The stamps sold well and were popular with
collectors with the exception of the dollar values.
The cost of stamps at such a high price were just
beyond what the market would accept at that time.
The set as a whole was the most expensive set of
U.S. stamps to that date. Shown below is the 5 cent
value. It shows Columbus at the Court of Spain
trying to convince Queen Isabella to finance his trip
to the Indies.
Scott #234
Check out the nice Boston, MA cancel dated
November 28, 1893. I think this entire issue is very
attractive. I like the detail and the engraving of each
of the stamps. The U.S. Postal Service issued a
reprinted set of the Columbians in 1993 (Scott
#2624-29. This was a four way joint issue between
the U.S., Spain, Portugal, and Italy. These were
issued in five souvenir sheets of 3 stamps each for
the 1 cent through $4.00 stamps and one souvenir
sheet with the $5.00 value.
Next came what is known as the “First Bureau
Issues”. These stamps were issued in three different
series from 1894-98. According to the Harris 2012
U.S./BNA Catalogue the United States Bureau of
Engraving and Printing replaced the American Bank
Note Company as the contractor for all U.S. postage
stamps. The first of these series was issued in 1894.
To help expedite the transition from the American
Bank Note Co. to the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and
Printing the 1890-93 stamps were modified only
slightly having a small triangle added to the upper
corners of each stamp. Otherwise with only a few
other very minor differences the 1 cent through 15
cent stamps are basically the same. Shown below
are a stamp from the 1890-93 issue and its
counterpart from the 1894 series for comparison.
Scott #221
From Small
Bank Notes
In the second or 1895 series for Bureau stamps,
watermarking was added as a means to help prevent
counterfeiting. According to the Harris Catalogue a
counterfeiting scheme for 2 cent stamps was
discovered about the same time as the decision was
made to watermark these new stamps. Some of
these counterfeits are known to exist postally used.
The third or 1898 series involved color changes
related to the adoption of a Universal Postal Union
code that recommended standard colors for
international mail. The U.S. changed the colors on
the lower values of the 1895 series. For the most
part these new stamps are easily identified as the
colors are quite different. However, the 2 cent
stamp may pose some problems as the color change
was from carmine to red.
Following the “First Bureau Issues” is the “TransMississippi Issue”. These nine stamps were issued
for the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, NE
in 1898. For that reason they are also sometimes
referred to as “The Omahas”. I personally feel that
these stamps are among the most beautiful stamps
the U.S. has ever issued. They show various works
of art. The 8 cent and 10 cent values show Frederic
Remington art and are shown below.
Scott #289
Scott #290
The 8 cent (Scott #289) is called “Troops Guarding
Train” and the 10 cent (Scott #290) is called
“Hardships of Emmigration”. Beautiful works of art
in miniature. As beautiful as they stamps are many
people believe that Scott #292 “Western Cattle in a
Storm” by J. A. MacWhirter is the most beautiful
U.S. stamp, I tend to agree – what do you think?
Scott #253
From 1 st Bur.
Series in 1894
The 30 cent and 90 cent small bank note values were
changed to 50 cent and $1.00 values in the new
Bureau issue. In addition the $2.00 and $5.00 values
were added in the new Bureau issue.
Scott #292
We could probably discuss forever whether this
really is the most beautiful U.S. stamp and not come
to agreement, however, I think that we can agree that
it is one of the country’s most beautiful stamps.
Imagine what these stamps would have looked like
had they been bi-colors. According to the Harris
Catalogue that was the original intent, but due to the
need for large quantities of revenue stamps at the
outset of the Spanish-American War, plans for
producing this set with black vignettes and differing
border colors for each denomination had to be
abandonded. You can get some idea of what these
stamps might have looked like as they were reissued
in 2 souvenir sheets of 9 in 1998. These are Scott #s
3209 (shown below) and 3210 (a souvenir sheet of 9
of the $1 Cattle in the Storm stamp).
APS Stampshow: The last thing that I want to
cover in this newsletter is a plug for APS
Stampshow in Milwaukee. This is being advertised
as the largest stamp show in the country this year. I
have heard there will be as many as 150 dealers
participating in the show. It is being held from
August 8 to 11 at the Delta Airlines Center at 400
W. Wisconsin Ave. in Milwaukee. Admission is
free and show hours are from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00
p.m. on Thursday through Saturday and from 10:00
a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. If you go, please be
sure to take in the displays – there will be stamps
there that you may not have a chance to see again as
well as some very interesting and entertaining
exhibits. Again, find a friend and make the drive
down for a day of great philatelic fun.
Stamp Shows
(See Across the Fence Post for more details)
June 22-23 Tri-pex Stamp Fair, St. Aloysius Gonzaga Hall,
1435 South 92nd St., West Allis, WI
July 6 Bay de Noc Stamp and Coin Show, 2001 N. Lincoln
Rd., Escanaba, MI
July 13-14 MSDA Summer Stamp Show North, Comfort Inn,
600 Milwaukee Ave., Prospect Heights, IL
July 27 8th Lakeland Coin & Stamp Summer Show, Woodruff
Town Hall, Hwy 47E, Woodruff, WI
August 8-11 APS Stampshow, Delta Airlines Center. 400 W.
Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI
Scott #3209
Well, in the past two months we have moved from
the first U.S. stamp through the 19th century. Next
fall we will continue into the 20th century tackling
issues like the Pan-American, Louisiana Purchase,
Jamestown Exposition, Washington-Franklins, and
so on. I have enjoyed our trip through U.S. history
and U.S. stamps. It has been educational for me and
I hope that you have learned from it too.
Schedule of Events
Shown below is the program schedule for the current year:
June
Joint Meeting with Appleton in Green Bay,
Silent Auction (no business meeting)
July
Silent Auction (no business meeting)
August
Silent Auction (no business meeting)
September
Pretty Ugly Night, Silent Auction