Society Business Page
Ah, spring heralds (for most of the nation) the arrival of warmer weather and flowers. And harks for all a rejuvenation of spirits following winter and renewed prospecting of collecting as stamp shows gear up. INDYPEX is well underway for programs and events, and we hope for your arrival there in late June. Please plan to exhibit your material, and I will promise to view it for inclusions to the next Card Catalog.
I'd like to thank all UPSS member contributors of 2007. A complete list (barring mistakes) is included in this issue. Whether small or large, your gifts help run the society. Due to your help, dues and other income, no great changes are planned to our basically conservative investment programs.
I'm proud to say the Lewandowski endowment, continuing to anchor our solid finances, also allowed the UPSS to gift funds to eleven public accessible philatelic libraries for 2007. Among those were the National Postal Museum, APRL, and others in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Texas. As a publishing society, the UPSS currently send these same libraries copies of our publications at no cost when they are printed. Our request to those libraries is to add reference books to the shelves, and hopefully something in the postal stationery genre will appear.
As another service, the UPSS website will shortly list over 3000 worldwide issues by TOPIC. For those "topical-ist" collectors, postal stationery is a somewhat overlooked but fertile source of material. This exhaustive list of mostly 21st century material is the work of Dalene Thomas, UPSS member and former president of the ATA. Much thanks.
The U.S. May 2008 postal rate change is fortunately minor. A full spectrum of sizes and windows for the workhorse definitive envelopes will be issued, however no commemoratives were announced. With the increase of rates new printings of the priority and express envelopes may occur (provided USPS can better market their usefulness, rather than gouge the collector).
This year, beyond the St. Mary's commemorative postal card, we will again have a plethora of picture postal card issues. These include stamp-matching cards for Tail Fins & Chrome (5), Disney (4) and in October, the Great Lakes Sand Dunes (10!). This last one may well mirror the shape, cost and printing quantities of the Florida Wetland issue (which in Linn's currently sells at $29.95 / set). Or not - stay tuned.
For postal cards, costs go up too - with only a penny added for postage - but an increase to three cents for the privilege of using the government's card stock. We'll see if picture postal card sales price will be limited to only a maximum of 3x the face value. Look (and ask) for color 1st day cancels too.
Lewis Bussey
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