The San Diego Stamp Show was held February 24 to 26. In addition to a United States first day ceremony for the $10 Floral Geometry stamp, the show included several seminars from APS affiliates, including the Mexican Elmhurst Philatelic Society International (MEPSI), the United States Philatelic Classics Society (USPCS), the Eire Philatelic Association, the Rossica Society for Russian Philately and the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors (AAPE).
Omar Rodriguez received the multi-frame grand for his exhibit, “Mexico First Issue By District 1856-1864: The 572 Stamp Set Challenge.” Nicholas Kirke’s “Evolution of Outbound Foreign Mail Cancelled in New York City 1845-1878” received both the multi-frame reserve grand and the most popular award. Robert Benninghoff won the single frame grand for his “Development & Use of 2d Map of Ireland Stamp December ’27-June ’41.” Sojn Brejtfus won the youth grand for “Railroad Perfins on Cover.”
The Garfield-Perry Stamp Club, an APS chapter, hosted stamp collectors at its 133rd March Party from March 18 to 20 in Strongsville, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The Ohio Postal History Society convened at the show and local members gave seminars on the French Congo, Czechoslovakia and the centenary of the U.S. postal card.
James Hering.

James Hering received the grand award for his multi-frame exhibit, “The Two Cent Hardings” and Emory Toops received the reserve grand for his multi-frame exhibit, “The Development and Use of the Provisional Issues of South Vietnam.” In the single-frame category, John Hotchner claimed the grand award for his exhibit, “The Mid-19th Century Start of Perforating in Great Britain and the United States.”
At the awards dinner that Saturday night, several club members debuted the Garfield-Perry Players with a humorous skit about collecting and the actions of collectors to justify their purchases to spouses. The skit took the place of a formal speaker and was based on a news item on the annual exhibition and bourse of the Rubber City Stamp Club of Akron, Ohio, that appeared in 1936 in The American Philatelist.
John Hotchner

The St. Louis Stamp Expo welcomed collectors from March 24 to 26, including members of the Germany Philatelic Society, the German Colonies Collectors Group, the Military Postal History Society, the American Society of Polar Philatelists and the Missouri Postal History Society.
Serge Kahn won both the multi-frame and single frame grand awards with “Charcot in the Antarctic” and “Dumont D’Urville Helps Reveal Antarctica.” The multi-frame reserve grand was won by Robert Hohertz for “Revenue Imprinted Paper of the Spanish American War Tax Era.”
The last couple months have been rough for the society and hobby with the passing of a number of important philatelists.
Richard Bates

Richard Bates spent nearly 40 years as a professor of chemistry at Georgetown University but was an APS member for even longer. He served on the APS Expert Committee, was an officer and active member of the Canal Zone Study Group, the editor of the Canal Zone Philatelist, and won many awards for his exhibits at national stamp shows.
George Cosentini, from San Diego, was another 50-year APS member. George collected, wrote and exhibited on military postal history as well as having significant involvement with the Sandical World Series show.
Robert Greenwald reached 47 years of APS membership. He had an exhibit on the International Geophysical Year and collected stamps from Hong Kong and Macau, and unexploded booklets. Back in the 1980s, he founded the Booklet Collectors Club, and then became a very early adopter and promoter of desktop publishing software, so that he could self-publish the group’s monthly journal, The Interleaf, which he created and edited. He also had a “Watching the Weeklies” column in The Philatelic Communicator, which compared and critically evaluated four competing commercial American stamp publications of the time — Linn’s Stamp News, Stamp Collector, Stamps, and Mekeel’s Weekly Stamp News.
Sergio Sismondo

Jerome Jarnick, of Michigan, joined the APS in 1950 and the “earliest” article of his that shows up in our online library catalog was from a 1954 issue of Weekly Philatelic Gossip. He was very active in the British North American Philatelic Society and was APS representative for the Collectors Club of Michigan.
Dealer and postal historian Sergio Sismondo did not join the APS until 1993 but had a booth for every APS August show from 1981 until 2021, the first few before he became an APS member under the name of his wife, Liane, who became an APS member in 1977. Beginning in 1998, Sergio offered expertizing for nearly all postage stamps, regardless of country and the idea for the Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue is said to have come from a dinner he had with the publisher of the Scott catalogs.