For philatelists, exhibiting portions of their collections at stamp shows can be a fun and rewarding experience. If you desire, you can travel to the shows, see new places, meet new friends, eat at the great local restaurants and see the sights. And, of course, you can enjoy sharing in the other exhibits – one of philately’s greatest learning experiences. This brings me to the subject of today’s blog; over the the years I have come to believe exhibiting’s greatest reward is the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding for your own material and subject area.  No matter how long you have ..read more

The 2022 edition of the annual federal duck stamp art contest was originally scheduled to take place at the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum in Bismarck on September 23-24. This was an appropriate choice, as North Dakota is at the center of the hallowed Prairie Pothole Region and, therefore, of great importance to North American waterfowl as one of the primary breeding grounds and also a place of rest and refuge for migratory birds moving up and down the Central Flyway. Unfortunately, for the third year in a row an uptick in Covid cases caused the event, once again, to be cancelle ..read more

Over the past couple of months we have made many additions to the website: the federal waterfowl stamp catalogs have been revised and updated (to include the separate catalog for graded stamps); in response to an avalanche of requests following the post on Will Csaplar being awarded a second large gold medal in London – we have rescanned the exhibit in its current state (for those unaware, there have been numerous changes since it was shown in Finland in 2017); we have also added two First of State Duck Stamp Print galleries, along with many new PDFs and Flipbooks.   Federal Waterfowl Sta ..read more

    The London International Stamp Exhibition, originally scheduled for the spring of 2020 and then postponed for two years due to COVID19, recently concluded. For two American revenue collectors, Will Csaplar and Michael Mahler, the extended wait was well worth it – as Csaplar’s and Mahler’s exemplary exhibits were each awarded a prestigious 2nd international large gold medal. That their twin achievements took place in England made it all the more memorable and significant. For stamp collectors, England represents not only the birthplace of their hobby, it is the place where philat ..read more

In between setting up for our annual Halloween Haunted Attraction, Eric and I, along with the help of Kaiya and Michael Jaffe, have accomplished two things for the Waterfowl Stamps and More website. First, in a continuation from the last post regarding the new galleries – we have finished updating the Catalog of U.S. Non-Pictorial Waterfowl Stamps. This included adding recent discoveries, such as the 1941 Marion County Water Fowl Stamp error (see Figure 1), several entirely new series (Michigan Managed Waterfowl Area Passbook Stamps; Minnesota Special Canada Goose Stamps and the recent Wyoming ..read more

The summer and fall months have not been kind to to those who live in California the last five years. It has been unusually dry (very little rainfall), hot, windy and, over the last two years, we have had dry lightening thrown into the mix. Having had to evacuate three out of the last four years from the threat of wildfires, I now find myself reluctant to take on lengthy projects (such as multi-part blog series) in the summer and fall months – fearing they could be interrupted at any moment for an unknown period of time. This, however, has not prevented us from working on several other website ..read more

The annual federal duck stamp art contest was held this past weekend, September 24-25. Due to COVID19 protocol, it was not possible for the much-anticipated event to be the enjoyable public affair that we have become so accustomed to (and, like so many aspects of our lives – perhaps taken for granted). As was the case last year (2020), it was decided it was best to hold the contest with a limited live audience; the USFWS opting instead to stream the judging for both day one and day two live on youtube via a link on their website (see Figure 1).   Figure 1. Official announcement their wou ..read more

In the conclusion to our series on Charles and Libby Schwartz, I will endeavor to duly wrap up our story and summarize their remarkable careers. Ordinarily, when dealing with someone (in this case a couple) responsible for such a prodigious output like the Schwartzes, this would be no simple task. Thankfully, Charles and Libby had the foresight to leave us with an appropriate opus to help set the tone for today’s finale and make this assignment more straightforward; I have included excerpts from their Wildlife Drawings throughout this series and today we will begin by taking a closer look at t ..read more

Charles W. Schwartz was born in St. Louis in June of 1914. His father was an amateur naturalist and “Carl”, as young Charles was then called, became interested in studying animals and all other kinds of wildlife at a very young age. He spent much of his free time at Forest Park Zoo, in St. Louis, where he met and enjoyed a close friendship with Marlin Perkins. Perkins helped cultivate Charle’s love of the outdoors and wild animals. After graduating high school, Charles entered the University of Missouri on a football scholarship. He was soon injured, and this led him to focus on biology and zo ..read more

Throughout their prodigious 40+ year careers (and especially during the 1960s and 1970s) Charles and Libby Schwartz were kept very busy with a wide variety of projects. While much of their time was spent producing wildlife and conservation movies, they were also responsible for creating artwork and text for The Missouri Conservationist as well as many other MDOC publications and informational materials (see Figure 1), several of which I have touched on in this series of posts. This was in addition to conducting wildlife research projects (arguably, their main line of work), producing shorts fo ..read more