| Minnesota Stamp EXPO is this month running three days, July 18th through the 20th. This is an official APS World Series of Philately show complete with exhibits, programs and an auction and lots more to enjoy. |
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Our areas largest show of the year impacts the library schedule as well as that of many of the local stamp clubs. |
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Last week I posted that the library would have it's monthly bourse this coming Saturday, but I could find anyone to confirm that, so we are changing that to a work day. |
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The library's annual meeting will be held on Saturday at the EXPO at 11:00 AM. |
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The Second Sunday Show will not be held this month. |
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The Twin City Philatelic Society's second meeting will be held Thursday the 17th assisting setting up EXPO. |
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The Lake Minnetonka club and the Maplewood club are also sponsors of the show. I know that the Maplewood Stamp club will still have its regular meeting this month. I did not hear from the Minnetonka stamp club at the time this was prepared, so I assumed they are still meeting at the regular time and place. If this is incorrect I will post the correction in next week's Nooze if I find out in time. |
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If you are not sure if your club's schedule has been changed due to the show, please check with your club. If I have listed anything in error send me an email as soon as you are able. I am also getting ready for the show and last minute notices may not make it in time for an update. |
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It takes a lot of volunteers to help the Minnesota Stamp Dealers Association pull off a three day show and it brings in dealers from all over the country. This is your chance to see and purchase new material. |
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I hope to post what this month's program at the library will be soon. |
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For this week's cover I go back to what shifted me from collecting stamps to collecting covers. I started collecting stamps at seven years old, cutting and soaking the stamps from the family mail. I also cut all the postmarks into nice little squares. To add to my collection I bought from approval dealers that advertised on match books and in little ads in the back of magazines. Sometime in my teens I stopped actively collecting stamps, but I continued to accumulate the mail. At some point in my 30's I pulled out my collection and all the stuff that I had accumulated. I was surprised by a few things. First, I had collected a lot of common stuff. The lots I bought from the approval dealers were often short sets missing the high values and some really pretty looking CTO's with little value. Second, I had a lot of duplicates from the family mail. If anyone needs a few thousand three cent statue of liberty stamps, I may be able to help them out. My biggest surprise was in all of the postmarks that I had so neatly cut and organized none of them were from Fridley, which was the town I grew up in. My focus then shifted to all of the mail that I had accumulated that had not been ravaged by my scissors. I saw a lot of small towns that I had never heard of and found the variety of cancel types interesting. I was still missing Fridley in both my piles of envelopes, (covers, I had not learned that term at that point). I went to the Fridley post office for answers and was told that Fridley was a branch of the Minneapolis post office system. I asked if it was ever any different and the annoyed counter worker politely told me to get lost. This was long before the internet, so my only place to search further was my local library. That did not get me any closer to an answer, but there I did learn the term cover for what I had been calling envelopes. My next stop was a stamp show at a large hotel in Minneapolis. I saw a dealer there that had several tables with well organized covers and a lot of people digging through all the boxes. He told me that I should be able to find a cover with a Fridley cancel and also gave me the names of a couple books that I was able to check out from the U of M library. Here I finally learned that Fridley had a post office from March 12, 1879 through October 30, 1928. My search for Fridley escalated and when I finally found my first one it was in a dollar box with four others. They were all postcards. In my quest I had found my covers from towns that I was not familiar with or they had interesting cancels or rates that did not make much sense to me at the time. I decided to collect as many Minnesota covers from different cities as I could. How many could there possibly be? The answer to that question is almost 3,800, not counting branches and stations which number over 1000 as well. Of the 3800 almost 75% are DPO's, discontinued post offices. DPO's can be post offices for towns that no longer exist, name changes, location changes, or the mail is now handled by a larger post office nearby. If you live in any of the suburbs of the Twin Cities you will likely see a postmark from Minneapolis or St. Paul and the post office in your town is a branch a postal station for one of them. |
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The good news is research in any area of philately is so much easier these days at our library. We have 1000's of books and I bet one of our volunteers can help you in your search. Of course there is also the internet which did not exist when I started. |
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I have since collected many Fridley covers since the first five that I found. The one below is the oldest known cancellation from Fridley. It is likely that there is something older as this was cancelled five years after the post office opened. It has a manuscript cancel. The postmasters in the smaller towns had to provide their own cancelling devices as they were poorly compensated for the service. Many of them initially cancelled with a manuscript pen cancel like this one. A lot of the post offices in the small towns back then were a desk in the hardware store, feed mill or someplace the public gathered. I have seen largest farm closest to the train station as a post office before. (I need to find that one again). |
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Next week I will go into some of the mistakes I made when I started collecting covers. I had a lot of feedback when I did that as a topic at a club. I have a lot of material,(mistakes I made) that I can share. |
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To sign up for the Toozday Nooze go to our website at NORPS.org, there you will find a link for the Toozday Nooze and on that page you can sign up to receive the Nooze every week and keep up on events and programs at the library as well as happenings with the local stamp clubs and shows. You do not need to be a member of the library to receive this, but I encourage you to do so. We are run and organized 100% by volunteers and your donations keep the doors open and the lights on. |
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If you have anything that you want shared let me know at pjflaherty58@gmail.com |
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