top of page

The Blog
Search


Pan American Airways Speed Test of 1946
I exhibited for the first time at the Rocky Mountain Stamp Show May 23-25, 2025. The title of my three-frame exhibit was the "Pan...


P.O. Box 1663
The unassuming cover in Figure 1 was mailed by Doris Watkins from Cambria, Virginia on December 2, 1944. It's addressed to her husband,...


The “Golden Age of Flight”: An Airmail Collector’s Wonderland
[A version of this blog was published as the feature story in the July/August 2025 issue of the Airpost Journal.] When I was growing...


U.S. Army Air Corps in WW II Was More Than Pilots: Stamp Collector and Fuller Brush Salesman Robert K. Schink
[This blog was published in the May/June 2025 Airpost Journal] What comes to mind when you think of the United States Army Air Corps...


1930 Airmail Plane Crash: A Tragic Flight of an Amusing Cover
[Note: This was blog was published in the Jul/Aug 2025 issue of the Collectors Club Philatelist , the journal of the Collectors Club of...


Joseph Steinmetz and the U.S. Army's Round-the-World Flight of 1924
In 1923, the U.S. Army Air Service decided that it would attempt to become the first group to circumnavigate the globe by airplane. This...


An Air Mail Plane Crash, John N. Luff, Harry Houdini: This Cover Has It All
(This post was published in two places: A postal history journal named La Posta for the 4th quarter of 2024 and in two parts in Le...


Contract Air Mail: The Catalyst of Commercial Aviation
I gave this presentation at the Great American Stamp Show in Hartford, Connecticut on August 16, 2024, and to the Greater Philadelphia...


One-Page Exhibits
Some stamp societies invite collectors to submit one-page exhibits that are then displayed on their websites. These are noncompetitive...


Celebrating 50 Years of Airmail Service to Bermuda
Update: This post was published in First Days , July-August 2024, pp. 60-69. The layout by editor Martin Kent Miller is fantastic. The...


V-Mail and "Free" Franks from World War II, 1944
During World War II, just like every conflict from the Civil War forward, the delivery of mail from the home front to the battlefield and...


Trans-Pacific Mail to New Zealand and Australia Early 1940s
One of the major milestones in postal history was the establishment of transpacific airmail routes. The first route to be established was...


First Transcontinental Airmail Involving Night Flying
Update: This article was published in the American Air Mail Society's Air Post Journal for June-July 2024. A copy of this article is...


Advertising Covers - A Fascinating Collectible
Attached is a presentation that I delivered at the Philatelic Gathering on March 23, 2024. It's the final version of a presentation that...


Holes in Stamps That Are A-OK
Stamp collectors do not like stamps with imperfections, such as holes, but there is an exception and that is for stamps that purposefully...


Signed First Day Covers from the Wisconsin Tercentenary Issue of 1934
(This post was published in the May-June 2023 issue of First Days (No. 470, pp. 42-49), the journal of the American First Day Cover...


Cover Postmarked on D-Day, June 6, 1944
This cover was postmarked in Augusta, Georgia on June 6, 1944. That was the date Allied forces landed at Normandy, a day known as...


Cover Sent from the USS Iowa Anchored in Tokyo Bay at the End of World War II
(This article was published in the Airpost Journal, April 2024, Vol. 95, No. 4, Whole No. 1126, pp. 144-146. A PDF of the published...


"How Many Hides Has a Cow?" A DuPont Ad Cover from 1918
Not many American companies can trace back their roots more than 200 years. DuPont is one of those. Organized in 1802 in Delaware - where...


Airmail, Registered, Special Delivery First Day Washington Bicentennial Cover, 1932
This first day cover from 1932 has a lot going on. Let's start with the stamps. On January 1, 1932, in celebration of George Washington's...
bottom of page