APS AllPStar Leader Letter The American Philatelic Society 100 Match Factory Place, Bellefonte PA 16823 January 2013 exploring the world of exhibiting Your club members have been collecting stamps, and perhaps covers, and now they want to know how they can show off their collection. The answer is simple exhibits!! Now, don t let your members think this is going to be an overwhelming task. It is just a form of show-and-tell. what is an exhibit Simply told, an exhibit is a story using stamps, first day covers, mailed covers, postcards, postmarks, meters, or any other philatelic material. An exhibit could tell why the stamps are important to the exhibitor. Or they could tell how they represent some event in one s life or in history. It is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Exhibiting philatelic material has many benefits. It allows the club members to neatly mount their prized possessions on pages they design. It is a perfect way to share their collections with others. It is a learning experience, as the members research the stamps being used in the exhibit. And it is fun! get started Any tough job is much easier to complete when it is divided into steps. Preparing an exhibit is the same. You may want to take your club members through the following steps as they prepare their exhibits. However, even before step one, you need to decide how many pages are going to be in your members exhibits. I suggest starting with a four-page exhibit. This is not an overwhelming number, but it does allow for an introductory page, two pages for the meat of the exhibit, and a final page to finish off their topic. Step one Pick a topic. Have the members pick a topic. There are thousands of topics depicted on stamps. They should pick something that will keep their interest something they really like. Their topic should be one for which they will be able to find stamps. For example, there are lots of stamps depicting George Washington or Ben Franklin. But, how many stamps will they be able to find related to their school, or their teacher, or their town? Not many. On the flip side, members should narrow their topic so they are not overwhelmed. For example, there are many, many stamps depicting animals. If a member chooses to do an exhibit on animals, he/she may not know where to start in the plan. Even a topic such as cats may be overwhelming. Narrowing the topic to domestic cats or wild cats may be more satisfying for a 4-page exhibit. Step two Plan the exhibit. Planning is very important. Your members do not want to have to tear apart their exhibit because they forgot to include a certain part of their story. So, again, planning is important a plan for a story that has a beginning that sets the stage for the story, a middle that develops the story, and an ending that ties up any loose ends. Once the plans has been written down, review them
with your club members to be sure they flow in a logical order. Keep in mind what material is available to your members. Step three Organize the material. Now it is time for members to organize their material. They have the basic plan, so they should put the stamps into their plan. Stock pages are great to use for this purpose using one stock page for each page of the exhibit. Provide slips of paper or sticky notes so each member can mark what is to be on each page. Author and exhibitor Janet Klug likens an exhibit to a comic book. She states Comic books are essentially picture stories. Each frame of the comic advances the story using a great illustration and very few words. It is visually exciting. That is your goal with a philatelic exhibit. At this stage of the process, your club members will find if they have the material needed to complete their exhibits. Do they have too much material? If so, they may need to change their plan. For example, if they have too many stamps to do an exhibit on domestic cats, they may want to change their plan to white domestic cats or striped domestic cats. On the other hand, if they don t have enough material, they may need to do a search to find stamps to complete the gaps in their story line. Step four This may be the most fun portion of this exercise for your club members. They have completed the planning, found the material needed, and organized their material. Now it is time to actually lay out their exhibit, making their pages visually attractive. The text should be brief. They are writing captions for the philatelic materials used, not a story that is going to take a long time to read. Your members may handwrite their captions directly onto the paper; they may print them onto a separate sheet, cut them out, and paste them on the final product; or they may print directly on their exhibit page. The paper that the exhibits are mounted on should be heavy enough to support the material that is being mounted on the pages. I suggest using 60 100 pound archival quality paper. However, not all printers will handle heavy paper. In this case, you may choose to use a lighter weight (20 26 pound) and then add a second, blank sheet behind the exhibit page so it will not be flimsy. The philatelic material can be attached to the exhibit pages using stamp mounts, corner mounts, or hinges. Corner mounts can be used for any covers. Stamp mounts are nice, but can be quite expensive. Hinges are much more affordable, and work well for any exhibit. almost done Your members have completed their exhibits. Now what? They should carefully write their names on the back of each page. Numbering the pages is also a good idea. They certainly don t want to lose their work, and if someone else is mounting their exhibit, they want the pages kept in order. I recommend placing each page into a 3-hole punched page protector. The type that has a top opening and are sealed on both sides and the bottom work great. If a stamp should come loose, it will remain in the protector and not be lost. These can be found at any office supply store and many hobby stores, and are relatively inexpensive. now it is your turn Your club members have spent a lot of time completing this project. So, now is the time to show off their work. Contact your school principal, school librarian, or local librarian to see if you can create a display in their venue. If there is not room to display all the exhibits at once, perhaps a rotating display will work for you. Some local clubs have stamp shows that welcome youth exhibits. The APS website http://stamps.org/local-clubs maintains a list of member clubs. Check the site to see if there is a club in your area. Contact the Show Chairman about exhibiting your members exhibits. They may even judge the exhibits, so some of your members may receive ribbons for all their efforts! more information American Philatelic Society http://stamps.org/manual-and-scoresheets American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors www.aape.org American Topical Assoication http://americantopicalassn.org
Notes from the Youth Coordinator Janet Houser More from the world of exhibiting Seeing members completed exhibits is very rewarding. Watching them work to get that finished product is even more satisfying. Some suggestions from the APS Youth Department: Be prepared to give lots of positive reinforcement. Find something positive in every exhibit. Expect the quality of the exhibit to match the member s ability. A second grader s exhibit may not be as advanced as that of a fifth graders. Likewise, a beginning collector may not have the same resources as a member who has been collecting for several years. Don t expect to complete this project at one meeting. This is an ongoing venture. Allow some time at several meetings to review what has been done, and to give suggestions for the next step(s) of the exhibit. You may want to take pictures showing how their exhibits are progressing. This could be used as part of the positive reinforcement throughout the project. Solicit help from a parent or from another collector. Even a non-collector can assist with what a youngster is writing, or by helping to hinge the stamps properly on the exhibit page. A 10-year old s exhibit The last four pages of this newsletter show an exhibit done by a ten-year old. He used a simple word-processing program that was on his computer to print the words. Many of his stamps were mint (never used) so he used mounts to keep them in place. His covers are held in place with corner mounts, such as those used in scrapbooking projects. share with other club leaders I am asking that each AllPStar Leader send me a short blurb, telling about something you have done with your club over the past year. Have you made album pages? had a stamp swap? designed stamps? organized a collection? had an end-of-year picnic? go on an outing? I would like for you to share your experiences with other leaders. You are welcome to share pictures of club events. For example: At a recent local junior stamp club meeting we discussed topical collecting. I was amazed at the number of members who thought all the stamps in a topical collection had to be from the same country. or At a recent meeting we talked about how to organize your stamp collection. We looked at stock pages, and I was able to give each of them a page to keep their stamps in. I also showed them how to hinge stamps onto an album page. I m not expecting an essay. Just a paragraph or two to share. You may e-mail me at ysca@stamps.org. Attachments may be in word, tif, jpg, or pdf format. cachet contest The deadline for submitting entries in the cachet contest has now passed. A big thank-you to all who participated, especially to you leaders who have taken the time to work with your club members on this project. The entries are being judged and the winners will be announced in our next AllPStar Leader Letter.
what do I represent? Each of the stamps shown below represent a part of the United States. Match the letter to the appropriate stamp. A - Booker T. Washington s home B - Old Faithful C - Statue of Liberty D - U.S. Capitol E - Panama Canal F - Washington Monument G - The Alamo H - Columbus comes to America I - Signing of the Declaration of Independence
A sample 4-page exhibit - page 1
A sample 4-page exhibit - page 2
A sample 4-page exhibit - page 3
A sample 4-page exhibit - page 4