The Stanley B. Ashbrook Cup has been awarded to our distinguished past President, Richard F. Winter.

Dick is a graduate of the Naval Academy and served in the submarine service for 22 years, during four of which he was the commanding officer of a strategic, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.

He is the Vice-Chairman of the North Carolina Postal History Commission and has designed the State Postal History section of the Arago website maintained by the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum. In addition, he is a member of the Museum's Council of Philatelists.

His philatelic life, however, has been centered on the maritime mails and particularly transatlantic mail to and from the United States. Dick's first book, North Atlantic Mail Sailings 1840-75, was co-authored with Walter Hubbard. It describes the 31 different companies that carried U.S. mails to and from Europe and lists nearly all of their steamships and sailing dates during 36 continuous years.

Since that first effort he has served as the Editor of The Chronicle's Foreign Mails Section and has written numerous articles for many journals, including three major research works for the Philatelic Congress Books.

Virtually every major award offered in America has come to him, including this Society's Perry, Ashbrook and Brookman Cups, the USPCS Distinguished Philatelist Award, the APS John N. Luff Award, the American Philatelic Research Library's Cryer Research Award, and the Collectors Club of New York Lichtenstein Award.

This year the Ashbrook Cup is again awarded to him for his new book, Understanding Transatlantic Mail, Vol. 1, published by the American Philatelic Society. This tour de force of 482 pages renders all of the myriad and complex markings found on transatlantic covers, whether applied in the United States or one or more European countries, perfectly understandable.

The Carroll Chase Cup is awarded this year to Scott R. Trepel.

Scott is the renowned President of Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries of New York. He started collecting stamps in the fourth grade at the age of 8 or 9 and the next year conducted his first stamp bourse at school. In 1980, he became the head of the stamp department of Christies in New York; in 1991 he joined the Robert A. Siegel firm as a partner with its founder. At Christies and Siegel he has sold upwards of half a billion dollars in philatelic properties, including holdings of Walter Klein, Henry C. Gibson, Sr., Raymond and Roger Weill, Dr. Leonard Kapiloff, The Honolulu Advertiser and Thurston Twigg-Smith. These sales established numerous world records for U.S. items, including the Hawaiian 2¢ Missionary cover, the 1¢ Z grill and the inverted Jenny plate block.

Trepel's career in research and writing on philatelic subjects has been just as spectacular as his auction career. He is the 1869 Section editor of The Chronicle and has received many of this Society's awards, including the Neinken and Chase Cups. He was the editor of the Philatelic Foundation's publication "U.S. Postmarks and Cancellations," and wrote the definitive work on the City Despatch Post issues as well as studies on the Pony Express stamps.

He sits on the Board of Trustees of the Philatelic Foundation and is a member of the Smithsonian's Council of Philatelists at the National Postal Museum.

This year's Chase Cup is awarded to Scott as the lead author of Rarity Revealed: The Benjamin K. Miller Collection, a joint publication of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and The New York Public Library. The first 11 chapters of this of this book brilliantly summarize the classic period of United States philately when private bank note companies rather than the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (which took over the task in 1894) produced all of this country's stamps. They include discussions of the attempts of these companies to control the variant colors used to produce long runs of the same stamp; the introduction of perforations to easily separate stamps; the introduction of grills to foil the reuse of stamps from which prior cancels had been removed; and the first attempts to produce commemorative postage stamps. Of particular interest is the story of the engravers of postage stamps and other bank note company employees who moved from one company to another as one contract expired and a new company took over stamp production.

This year the Elliott Perry Cup is awarded to the three joint authors of the selected work, Richard C. Frajola, Michael O. Perlman and Lee C. Scamp.

Richard C. Frajola is a philatelic consultant to several private clients and auction houses. He has been involved professionally in philately since 1968 and worked for several auction houses until he opened his own. He ran "Richard C. Frajola, Inc." from 1980 until 1995. His auctions were well known for featuring important collections of postal history. He has published extensively since 1979 including three books in the last two years. He is currently working on a book about the stamps and postal history of Costa Rica to 1900.

Michael O. Perlman is President and C.E.O. of BrandsMart U.S.A., which is a chain of retail stores specializing in electronics, computers, televisions, and appliances. He began collecting stamps with his father at the age of 7. In 1992 he began a specialized collection of the U.S. 10 cent issues of 1855-1868. He is on the board of directors of the Philatelic Foundation as well as the Western Cover Society. He belongs to the APS, United Postal Stationary Society, U.S. Philatelic Classics Society, NY Collectors Club, Cancellation Club, Western Cover Society, and the Scandinavian Collectors Club. Working with the FBI, in 2005 he was instrumental in the recovery of the Charles Starnes' stamp and postal history collections.

Lee C. Scamp was a systems engineer with the government and then with a not-for-profit company until he retired in 2006. After serving as an Army officer, he began to study the postal history of Hong Kong and the British Treaty Ports. He served as Secretary of the Texas Philatelic Association and received one of the early Distinguished Texas Philatelist awards. He has exhibited various aspects of Hong Kong postal history and has received awards from local through international shows. He has authored three books and numerous articles published in journals. This resulted in an invitation to become a member of the Society of Postal Historians. Research for the fourth book, The U.S. Post Offices in China and Japan, was completed ten years ago but the work was never edited until the joint effort to produce this book.

Their work, The United States Post Offices in China and Japan 1867 to 1874, is the basis of this award. This 242 page study deals with the carriage of mails from different countries to China and Japan until 1867 and with the history of the Pacific Mail Steam Ship Company thereafter. Different chapters examine the Post Office services in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Yokohama, Hiogo, Nagasaki and Hakodate. An appendix details the sailings of the company. Covers and maps provide examples of the service described in the text; they are supplemented with tracings of the markings that are more fully documented in an appendix.

Lester G. Brookman Cup, awarded only to a Member of The U. S. Philatelic Classics Society for Outstanding Service to the Society: W. Wilson Hulme: For his outstanding service as president of the Society.

Leonard Hartmann formed and maintains several important U.S. philatelic collections, including an award-winning collection of Chicago stampless markings and a definitive collection of the lithograph issues of the Confederacy. He is recognized as one of the leading researchers, expertisers and authors on the stamp issues of the Confederacy, and the pre-eminent authority on the lithographs. His published work includes, among many other articles, a definitive series on "Plating of CSA Stone 2" which ran in The Confederate Philatelist from 1966-1968; a series in the same journal co-authored with Harry Rooke on "Crazy Confederates/Bogus Adhesives," in 1969; and 15 articles on CSA stamps in The Chronicle, from 1998-2006.