Award Recipients 2016-17

The Stanley B. Ashbrook Cup is awarded to authors of articles, books, or other studies concerning United States postal history from the Colonial Period to 1894.

For 2016, it is presented to Michael S. Gutman for his editorship of “Eastern Independent Mail and Express Mail Companies 1840-1845” (Published by The Eastern Independent Mail Study Group). This is a major new work about the Independent Mails and was contributed to by seven additional authors. Many of these operations have been written about in the past, but this is the first time all of them have been covered in a single book. This book will be useful for anyone who is interested either in the broad patterns of the subject or in understanding a particular cover in their collection and is an important work that belongs on every philatelic bookshelf.

The Dr. Carroll Chase Cup is awarded to authors of articles, books, or other studies concerning United States stamps issued prior to 1894 including postmaster’s provisionals, locals, carriers, and back-of-the book material.

For 2016 the Chase Cup is awarded to Jan Hofmeyr and James Lee for their Chronicle article “Linking 3c Washington Essays to Their Patents” (Vol. 68, No. 3, August 2016). This deeply researched article links the wide variety of 1861 Issue essay material to the various patents that were granted at the time for re-use prevention of U.S. stamps. Covering the Lowenberg, Wycoff, Gibson, Harmon and Thorpe patents, the authors explore the nature of each man’s ideas for stamp re-use prevention and the patents granted. Using a wide array of essay material from theirs and other stocks and collections, the authors link this material to the various patents covered. They also helpfully identify Scott Catalog numbers for the essays and suggest changes to the listings to more accurately reflect what exists. This article significantly increases our knowledge of a complicated and fascinating period of U.S. stamp production.

The Tracy Simpson Cup is awarded for outstanding service to the Society.

This year is awarded to John Barwis, whose involvement with the USPCS has been nothing short of a total commitment, benefiting the Society.  From his first project as a Director, analyzing the advertisers and cost structure of The Chronicle, to his stewardship as President, his involvement and leadership have advanced the goals of the Society.  

Under John’s 5 years as VP and 4 Years as President, the Society grew its investment portfolio from around $200,000 to over $600,000, due to fund-raising programs and prudent investing of our assets. Membership increased over 5%, astounding in these times of shrinking philatelic membership rolls.  Working with the APRL, John has preserved much of the USPCS archives in their custodianship.  He lead the effort to preserve Tom Alexander’s personal archive and records in the APRL, after spending five-days with his team in an un-air-conditioned warehouse in Kansas City, pouring over dusty file cabinets and boxes.  The Travers Papers scans on our website are there due to a deal he forged with the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.  John spear-headed the development for the new USPCS web site and its attendant data bases. This web site serves as the majority recruiting tool for the Society. John Barwis’ leadership, hard work, dedication and Outstanding Service to the Society have earned him the Tracy Simpson Cup.

The Susan M. McDonald award is bestowed annually by the Section Editors of the Chronicle of the U.S. Classic Postal Issues and recognizes articles about United States classic postal history published in a given Chronicle volume.

The 2016 award is presented to for his article “Relief Bruises: A Remarkable Feature of the 1857-61 1¢ Stamp.” Following his success in our May 2014 issue (an iconoclastic examination of the evolution of the various types of the 1c 1851 stamps), David Zlowe returned to the Chronicle in 2016 with an important three-part article, published in our February, May and August issues, that examined the perforated stamps from Plates 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 and their collective reliefs.  The article described features Zlowe calls “relief bruises” that appear both on the bust of Franklin and horizontally between the rows of stamps, and on a majority of the Type V/Va stamps.  Zlowe’s careful analysis and persuasive illustrations offered collectors a new way of looking at these endlessly fascinating stamps.

John H. Barwis was born in New York and started collecting stamps at the age of seven while living in the Philadelphia area. This helps explain why he has studied stamps and postal history of both New York and Philadelphia, but not his primary area of interest, which is colonial Victoria. That is a very interesting story, but, in reality, it happened purely by chance in the early 1990s while he was in Australia on a business trip.

Although Barwis wrote his first philatelic article in 1993 for the Cancellation Club News, he did not start writing in earnest until 2000. Since that time, he has written continuously for several journals, including The Chronicle of the U.S. Classic Postal Issues and The Collectors Club Philatelist, as well as four volumes of The Congress Book. His most important publication was a 520 page book in his primary area of interest. The work was published in 2009 as The Half-Lengths of Victoria: The Stamps and Postal History 1850-59. It was well received and was awarded the Reserve Grand at the 2009 APS StampShow in Pittsburgh. Not surprisingly, it did even better in Australia, receiving the highest points in the 2009 Australian National Philatelic Exhibition, the Grand Award at the 2009 New Zealand National Literature Competition, the John Gartner Medal for best Australian Philatelic Literature in 2010, and another gold medal at the 2013 FIP World Stamp Exhibition in Melbourne.

After several years of collecting and studying, John showed his first exhibit in 1999 at Stampex in London. Not only did he win a special prize for the best first-time exhibit, he also won the first of his many grand awards. In all, Barwis has shown a half-dozen different exhibits, including traditional and postal history, at numerous national and international shows, winning gold and large gold medals, as well as reserve grand and grand awards. In the United States, John has competed for the Champion of Champions award with four different grand award winning exhibits. He won the Champion of Champions in 2011 with The Half Lengths of Victoria. The other grand award exhibits are The Path to a Philadelphia Exchange Office for U.S.-British Mails, Philadelphia-Great Britain Mail, and Carrying the Mail from Victoria.

As a professional geologist, John worked in six different countries in a career that spanned over thirty years. He retired in 2003 and, fortunately for philately, has been extraordinarily active in organized philately since. His service began on the board of the Arizona Philatelic Rangers in 2004 soon after retirement. He was a Member of the Council for the American Philatelic Congress and served on the board of the Society of Australasian Specialists/Oceania. His service to the American Philatelic Society began in 2007 as a member of the Finance Committee, a position he still holds. Since then, he has conducted flood-risk analysis for them, strategic financial analysis, and served on the long-range planning committee from 2009-2010. He co-founded and is the current president of the Institute for Analytical Philately. Some of his most important service has been to our society, the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society. He was first elected to the board in 2006, became vice-president in 2007, and served as president from 2012 to 2016. His white paper on the economics and membership impact of publishing The Chronicle in color led to its most successful adoption. Some of his other efforts for the society have resulted in very large donations from the David T. Beals III Charitable Trust, the posting of the Travers Papers on the USPCS website along with Post Office Department correspondence, and the overall improvement of the society website.