The United States Stamp Society (USSS) is a “non-profit” volunteer-run association of collectors devoted to the study of postage and revenue stamped paper produced for use in the United States and U.S. administered areas. Once concerned exclusively with the production of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the USSS has expanded its coverage to all United States issues regardless of printer.
Kenneth Zierer Wins Literature Grand Award
Ken Zierer has won the first WSP sanctioned Article Literature Award at the Sarasota National Stamp Show. Ken’s article “The Dubious Origins of the Scott Listed Variety #424e” received one of the seven Large Gold medals awarded to the 32 submitted articles. The article, published in 2018 in three parts, in the May, June and July issues of The United States Specialist can be found by browsing the digitial Specialist. The competition, the first ever for philatelic articles at a World Series of Philately (WSP) show was judged by Peter McCann, Chief Judge, Patricia Walker and Patrick Walters. It would appear from the favorable reaction by the collectors at the Sarasota event, that this new form of article competition, might become a semiannual event at WSP shows.
John Hotchner’s Expertizing Columns Online
John Hotchner’s U.S. Stamps columns on expertizing are now available in the Resources section of the USSS website.
In 2014, Hotchner, a 50 -year member of the USSS, began including information about expertizing in his weekly “U.S. Stamp Notes” column in Linn’s Stamp News, a regular feature since 1986. It is an excellent resource for collectors encouraged to use expertizing services to assure that the material they buy is genuine and unaltered; equally, a source of knowledge for collectors interested in becoming expertizers. Though the topic remains far from exhausted, Hotchner has agreed to post the first 50 columns on the internet.
The text, provided in the Adobe PDF file format, is keyword searchable. There is also a Table of Contents page at the beginning of the PDF file that provides the date and title of each column.
Readers can go directly to the desired column, if the title is sufficient to identify the topic of interest, by left-clicking on the title.
Hotchner is hopeful that the compilation can be augmented by adding new columns on a regular basis.