Welcome home to our new home.

On May 11th, we will welcome members and guests to our new home at 58 West 40th Street. It has been a long time coming.

The last time we opened a new home for the Club was in 1937. It’s been 87 years. The last program we held at 35th Street was in March 2020, just as the pandemic was winging its way through our lives. It’s been four years. It’s been a long time, and May 11th will be a very special time to celebrate.

The evening will begin at our new home with a reception featuring hors d’oeuvres and drinks at 5:30 pm. At 7:15 or so, we will move over to the Lambs Club within the Chatwal Hotel at 130 West 44th Street for dinner and our award presentations.

Four Lichtenstein Award winners will receive their medals: Trish Kaufmann, Jim Mazepa, Randy Neil, and Charles Verge—four truly extraordinary philatelists who have made all our philatelic lives better.

We will also mark the publication of Nick Kirke’s book on New York City Foreign Mail.

Back in November, we held our single-frame competition, and we have the awards to bestow on the Grand award winner, Chip Gliedman, and the reserve grand and awards of merit winners.

We also will recognize the winners of the best program for 2023, Rob Faux and Scott Trepel, for the best article during 2023 in this journal.

Lest you fear a long, drawn out, and tedious session of calling out names, please remember this is New York, and they named the minute after us.

With the invitation going out in early March, we hope you can join us for what will be a memorable evening.

In October 1937, when Charles J Phillips, RDP, wrote about the previous home for the Club in this journal, floor plans were printed in his article. With the advances in our technology, we have a very accurate and life-like rendering that you can view on the Club’s website. We encourage you to do so.

Although we are still in the midst of construction, one can see what will emerge as the finished product. Here, the form will follow purpose. Everything is on one level. The library is in one space. Easy access for everyone. Comfortable. Inviting. Multiple spaces for members to congregate.

One of the greatest fallacies regarding the Collectors Club is that many assume that most of our membership comes from the New York area. Not true. More than 85% of you live outside New York, from across the United States, North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australasia. You might think, so, why does this new home matter to me?

We are located now in the center of New York. It is one of the greatest cities in the world. We are in the heart of that city. We are close to all forms of transportation: airports, trains, and municipal transport. Your visit can also take advantage of world-class entertainment: Broadway, Lincoln Center, museums, dining, and shopping. We will be a warm and welcoming place to visit when you visit the city. It’s your Club.

There will be more to us than the opening dinner and its festivities. We will be holding classes and symposia. Once we get up to speed, we intend to make the Club a busy hub of activity.

And while we have ensured that the Club is accessible, we also recognize that accessibility comes in many forms. To that end, we will also host an open house at the Club on Wednesday, May 15th. For those who won’t be able to attend the May 11th event, this will be an excellent time to see for yourself.

We look forward to May, but more importantly, we look forward to all the memories we will form from an active and vibrant Club in the heart of Midtown New York.

–Lawrence Haber

In our last issue, I looked retrospectively at the year just completed. Now, we turn our attention to the future.

2024 is going to be wonderful.

I know that many of you are disappointed that we did not hold our usual Lichtenstein Awards dinner in 2023. The previous event, which honored Patrick Maselis, Mark Banchik, and John Barwis, was held at the Harvard Club. From all the reports that reached my ears, it was a splendid event, and everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughly. That was back in May 2022. At that time, we had yet to fully emerge from our Covid confinements. The opportunity to reconnect was a joy we savored.

We are pleased to confirm that we will hold a very special event on Saturday evening, May 11^th, our Gala Re-opening and Lichtenstein Awards Celebration. The evening will start with cocktails and hot d’oeuvres at our new home. Indeed, this will be a coming out party for our new premises and the first major event we will hold there. All the construction will be completed, and the dust will be gone. Following these preliminaries, we will stroll from West 40th Street over to The Chatwal, at West 44^th Street—practically next door. The Chatwal is a fabulous and recently renovated hotel in our neighborhood. There, we will complete the evening with all the formalities you would expect. I should also mention that this being New York, we operate with the so-called “New York Minute Rule,” so the speechifying will be minimal. The point is to celebrate and enjoy new beginnings and our shared passion. And to honor some very special people. It is guaranteed to be one of the most extraordinary and special evenings in the Club’s history. The formal invitations will go out around two months before the mid-May event. We know you will want to join us. Spring in New York is a very special time.

And, yes, our new home will be completed and we will move back in during the coming year. Just the other day, I was there in the midst of all the construction activity. Everything is proceeding on schedule. We expect to move in during the latter portion of March. The move will be progressive. We will not be calling up the mover and asking for all our “stuff” to be brought back in one fell swoop. That would overload us. Rather, we will progressively move back in sections. Once we are back, let’s talk a bit about what you can expect.

You can expect your Club to greet you if you are visiting from Queens, Brooklyn, Austin, San Jose, London, Paris, Sydney, or Tokyo. Access is easy, and if you can make it to the curbside, you will be able to make it throughout our facility with no impediments. In the lounge area, there will be copies of the daily New York newspapers and the major monthly general interest philatelic journals for you to peruse. Plus, coffee, tea, and cookies. Remember, we are located on West 40th Street, between 5^th Avenue and 6^th Avenue (“Avenue of the Americas”), diagonally across from the New York Public Library. We are close to both Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. Just about every bus and subway line passes near our doorstep. We are a perfect place to visit, either for an event, for research, or to rest your feet during your visit to midtown.

One of the elements that most excites me is the Library. All on one level. All within easy reach. We are no longer prisoners to a rabbit warren of a 100-year-plus structure not designed for the purpose, but now a new purpose-built home. The Library: the books, journals, and auction catalogs will all be within your reach. On the same floor and contiguously arranged. It will be a pleasure to use, and we expect many to take advantage of a major philatelic library in the heart of New York.

Our new presentation room will be fit out with the latest technology. Once again, we will host presentations in our home. These will be “broadcast” worldwide. In other words, our home will be open to those who can visit and those who remain at home.

One of the objectives of our new space is to provide multiple opportunities to meet and exchange. This requires multiple venues. With our new home, in addition to the large presentation room, there will be a smaller seminar room that holds twelve. The Library is always a favored place to congregate, there is a long table that also holds twelve, and in the lounge, two tables that each provide four, and the conversationally oriented sofas and club chairs. But, more than furniture is required. We will be scheduling meetings, symposiums, and classes. We aim to bring our Club back to life in our new home.

Yes, the coming year will be wonderful.

 

–Lawrence Haber

This is The Collectors Club Philatelist’s sixth and final issue of the calendar year. That being the case, providing a brief overview of the Club’s year that will soon be complete might be worthwhile.

During 2023, we provided 23 Zoom programs. A total of 32 individuals presented these programs. Our topics ranged from the classic to the modern, from traditional philately to postal history to topicals. Our presenters came from both inside the US and overseas. We mostly had single-presenter programs and special programs from several specialist groups. We also heard several group discussions and presentations from the National Post Museum and the forthcoming Boston 2026 International. We are committed to growing this hobby and expanding our reach.

As we look at this journal that you are reading right now. We believe that if you line up this issue with the November/December issues from 2022 and before, you will note a decided improvement in all aspects. We hope this journal truly speaks to you. We are proud of our editor’s efforts and the Publication Committee supporting him. We want this journal to be something you read and look forward to appearing in your mailbox.

Our success is dependent on your support. Your articles make the journal what it is, and we look forward to your contributions. But, also, sometimes, the little things can make a difference. The thought occurred the other day that we send our program presenters a very nice certificate and an engraved medal. Very nice. But for our contributors to this journal, historically, we have only provided a hardy handshake, aside for the best article of the year. This individual receives the Robert P. Odenweller Award. But for the rest? Nada, as we say in New York. Well, that is changing. From henceforth, everyone who contributes a full-length article to this journal gets a certificate and a commemorative pen. We have very few illusions about people lusting for another cert and a pen, but sometimes the little things make a difference. This is meant to communicate our appreciation in a visible and tangible way.

I am writing this virtually on the eve of our single-frame exhibit competition, which was held at the National Postal Museum. We are tremendously appreciative of the efforts of the Museum and wish to thank them for their support. But, our presence at the NPM is just one of many venues at which we have been present to meet members and connect with members and those not yet members. We are striving to be present at more shows and other venues where collectors gather.

As we have previously updated you, we have made significant progress in our move. The end is within sight. Demolition was completed in early November at 58 West 40th Street, and the fit-out has begun. The target for completion is early Spring 2024. But, one of the most tangible milestones has passed. We actually had the chance to go furniture shopping. We reviewed several choices for the chairs, sofas, and tables that will be purchased for our new Clubhouse. It is one thing to view a floor plan or a rendering of our new home, but to actually touch the actual furniture is special.

Speaking of the Clubhouse, we have started planning activities in our new home. But, even though we are currently in temporary quarters, we have been holding in-person events. Surely, you have seen the emails on our Show and Tell programs. By year-end, there will have been 9 of these. Slowly, we are all learning to re-engage with other collectors in real space, all at the same time. We hope to put in an exciting program of in-person and hybrid events as we cross into 2024.

We are very excited about the year that is about to close and obviously even more excited by what lies ahead.

Just prior to the publication date of this issue, we learned of the passing of Debbie Friedman. She was a force of nature. Over 50 years of membership in The Collectors Club. A first-rate philatelist and collector. But she will doubtless be most remembered for her efforts to support beginning adult collectors and new young collectors. She approached this task with passion and thorough commitment. Elsewhere, there will be a full-length obituary, but it must be said that we are all enriched from having known her and are all at a loss with her passing.

 

–Lawrence Haber