About VPS Stamp Exhibitions

Italia '98 World Philatelic Exposition Scott 1085 (1998) The August issue ofThe American Philatelist, the journal of the American Philatelic Society (APS), arrived late last week. I found John Seidl's column "First Things First" on the "Evolution of Stamp Shows" particularly interesting. It is a timely look back as the APS just held its annual "Great American Stamp Show", or GASS, in Hartford, Connecticut. John points out that the first stamp came out in 1840, but "there is no consensus when the first stamp show took place". John gives several possible dates for the "first" stamp exhibition. He also refers to Ken Lawrence publishing a chronology of stamp shows in Linn's Stamp News in May 2021. The basic conclusion is that stamp exhibitions started somewhere between 1851 and 1870. All of this lead me to dig out Kenneth A. Wood's book Post Dates and do a little research. There I found an entry that in March of 1862 stamps were issued for the newly formed Kingdom of Italy and in May of 1862 Great Britian issued the first special event postmark commemorating the London International Exhibition. All very interesting bits of information. In the context of philatelic exhibiting today, the exhibits at this year's GASS included over 1000 exhibit frames covering a vast array of philatelic topics. The highlight was the display of the 22 exhibits that were finalists for this year's "World Series Champion of Champions" Award, featuring exhibits that were the champions at regional shows over the last year. Stamp exhibitions have certainly come a long was since their introduction in the 1800's! Specifically within the Vatican Philatelic Society (VPS), we don't hold regular meetings or exhibitions, although it would be interesting to know if any of our members are doing much exhibiting at local or regional stamps shows. Please let us know if you are preparing exhibits and displaying them, either competitively or not. However, we do have a meeting coming up at the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History on October 19--Vatican Stamp Day. Lou Giorgetti has been doing some work with the Museum curator and gallery coordinator to put together exhibits featuring several outstanding topics for the event. The list of exhibits is quite impressive and includes many items from the Museum archives that are not normally on display. We hope you have made your plans to attend. We are going to have a lot of fun and talk about Vatican stamps! For those that do not want to talk much, the VPS Website Team has also developed a continuous five hour slideshow that we will be showing on a large screen monitor during the course of Vatican Stamp Day. Preparation testing is being done on a 45 inch tv monitor so it will be interesting see how things look on an 80 inch tv monitor. Come have some fun! As a preview to Vatican Stamp Day, the weekly slide show this week gives a presentation on the 2024 Vatican City Stamp Program . This presentation shows the first day covers obtained from the Vatican CFN so far this year. If one digs deep enough into the Vatican Notes there are warnings that a Vatican stamp collector has to have a lot of patience and persistence to obtain Vatican City first day covers. Sad but true. However, the folks at the Vatican CFN have been very helpful and it is possible to get first day covers with their help. This slide show shows first day covers for all 2024 stamps that have been issued so far. Just click on the slideshow button below the Daily Email article, and put you computer monitor in full screen mode by clicking on the F11 key (if you are using a Microsoft browser). Slideshow rotation requires the mouse to be pointed to the very edge of the screen. To pause on a slide, simply drag your mouse into the screen area, then pull it back to the very edge of the screen to continue slide rotation. Perhaps computer slideshows, web presentations, and other electronic methods are among the ways VPS members can see exhibitions of stamps and topics of interest. We are very geographically dispersed, and it is difficult to convene onsite meetings. But as John Seidl's article pointed out, stamps exhibitions "marked a big step forward in the development of stamp collecting". Perhaps Vatican Stamp Day and our little slide shows will help those of us who enjoy Vatican stamp collecting get the feel of attending a stamp exhibition.