The APS Board will host its next general meeting on March 31 at 3-4 p.m. Eastern. The Board will vote on adopting the new APS strategic plan during the public session.  

All APS members are welcome to attend via Zoom; to register, please click the button below. We hope to see you there!

We love welcoming visitors to the American Philatelic Center here in Bellefonte, PA, from APS members to members of our local community. Last month, we were visited by a wonderful group of fifth graders from St. John the Evangelist Catholic School, one of our local elementary schools.

To read more about their visit, and to see some of the stamps they designed afterward to celebrate their school, click the button below!

The deadlines have passed for applying for both Boston 2026 philatelic exhibit frames and literature entries. Accepted exhibitors have been notified and the required forms and payments are coming in. The complete list of accepted exhibits is now online on the EXHIBITS web page. The current February 5 list includes 856 total exhibits, 667 philatelic and 189 literature, divided by country and sorted by exhibitor first name. Sixty-four countries are represented. Please note that this is a work in progress, as not all exhibitors have responded to their acceptance and a wait list will fill in any declines. Take a look! 

Have questions about Boston 2026? Email us at tom.fortunato@boston2026.org.

This week, APS Director of Expertizing Ken Martin recommends checking out a new group in The Hub. This new group is dedicated to some odd stamps; EFOs and fakes, forgeries, and counterfeits, that is! Click the button below to read the introductory post to the new group from APS member Scott Payton. 

If you aren't already a member of The Hub, why not join the conversation today? Just click "Join The Hub" below to go directly to the site, or click here to download a step-by-step guide for registering from stamps.org. 

On February 26 at 7 p.m. Eastern, the APS will host President of Boston 2026 Yamil Kouri via Zoom for a special informational session about the World Expo. Yamil will share a brief presentation about the upcoming show, which will be held May 23-30 in Boston, MA, before taking questions from the audience.

To register for this virtual event, click the button below. We hope to see you there!

We recently received two new Articles of Distinction for 2025 from APS Chapters Peninsular State Philatelic Society and Palm Beach Stamp Club. From PSPS comes Postal History Makes Social History: The Bottle Float Story, Part Two by Cary E. Johnson. The article discusses the history of bottle float cards and their place in the sanitation revolution through the lens of a triumphant purchase by the author.

And from PBSC, we have Wilkins-Ellsworth Trans-Arctic Submarine Expedition by Keith Lichtman. This piece examines a twice-mailed cover and the Arctic adventures of Sir Hubert Wilkins and the submarine Nautilus in 1931.

Thank you to these chapters for submitting to Articles of Distinction, and congratulations to the authors!