I am writing this shortly after returning from the Great American Stamp Show in Cleveland. To my eye, the show was a tremendous success. The material in the frames was fabulous, the dealers were in good humor with wonderful material, and there were very special talks and events. (I also do not want to neglect to congratulate our long-time member and past governor, Nick Lombardi, on winning the Champion of Champions award. A true testament to persistence and so well deserved.) But the best part for me was seeing and speaking with so many of you. We hosted a dinner on Wednesday evening just before the show’s opening. Evidently, I was not alone in enjoying the renewal of personal connections. I am frequently asked why people ought to join the Collectors Club. Beyond this journal, our programming, and our library, the heart of the answer lies in the personal connections we forge, which this Club helps to sustain. Looking ahead at the calendar, we intend to be at November’s Chicagopex, the San Diego show in February, and Napex in June. We hope to see you at one of these shows. We will be sending out emails with further details.

Elsewhere in this issue, you will see that our single-frame competition will be back in early November at the National Postal Museum in Washington, DC. It has been four years since we have been able to hold this event. Both the pandemic and our move have mitigated against this event, and we are extremely pleased that the NPM has agreed to allow us to hold the event on their premise. We are very excited about this opportunity and look forward to a fabulous event.

We can not only look forward to the revival of our single frame competition in November. We are very pleased to announce that we will be holding our Lichtenstein dinner on Saturday, May 11, 2024, in midtown New York. We will formally bestow this Lichtenstein award on Trish Kaufman, Randy Neil, and Charles Verge at this dinner. Please mark your calendars and reserve the date. As we get closer, we will share all the necessary details.

You may be asking when we are moving into the new clubhouse. I am pleased to share that we have hired a general contractor and expect work to begin in early September. We are targeting February 2024 to begin the move-in process. Needless to say, we are very excited about this prospect.

Having answered one question, another series of questions start to emerge. We, the Collectors Club, and the hobby are not the same as we once were. The intervening pandemic changed us all. What was once unthinkable, holding large and effective meetings on a virtual platform, has gone from the unimaginable to the routine. When we decided to hold our first meeting on Zoom, there were many questions about the mechanics and process. What was once exceptional is now the routine.

I would suggest that there is no going back to that state of things as these were before this war we all call Covid. We have all changed. And it makes us think about the clubhouse’s role in our new world. In working through the future, I think we ought to return to the Club’s mission statement:

The Collectors Club brings members and friends together, virtually and in person, at its clubhouse in New York and around the country to educate, inspire and support them in pursuit of their philatelic goals.

Our goals and objectives include:

Provide a social venue for members and specialty societies
Organize a regular program of lectures and displays
Sustain a philatelic library and publishing program

These were and remain our objectives. The real goal is to make our clubhouse a vibrant and active place. It must be a place where things are always happening, and there is always a reason to visit.

While Zoom remains a critical part of our meeting structure, we have recently begun to sponsor small, in-person meetings to discuss and exchange thoughts and ideas. We started this in the spring, trying to explore options for meetings. You may have seen email notices regarding “Show and Tell.” You will see more of these as we move into the fall, winter, and spring seasons. These were preceded by a simple dinner at a local restaurant, with the group adjourning to our offices on West 42nd Street. To date, these have all been scheduled for the evening. I think you can expect some experimentation on starting time. We will also try doing this during the day, centered around lunchtime. Being located in Midtown Manhattan, we should try to take advantage of our location in the center of the Acela corridor. It isn’t a difficult ride from Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and thereabouts.

We are also evaluating serving our membership and the broader philatelic community with educational programs that benefit our avid members’ needs and desires. We seek to serve the more advanced philatelists, and there is much that we can do. When we reopen in late February, our location will be on 40th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, across from Bryant Park and the New York Public Library. We are near Penn Station, Grand Central, and numerous subway stops. There is much to flesh out, but we hope to take advance of our location, in the center of a busy and active city, with superb transportation options.

We will undoubtedly be hosting traditional programs from our clubhouse once it is reopened. These will be handled in a hybrid nature, but I think we will all accept that the world has changed and we have to do more than what was once the case. We are utterly committed to doing that.

It is going to be very exciting.

 

–Lawrence Haber