January 7, 2023
At the the 78th Annual Stamp Exhibition of Southern California (SESCAL 2022) held in October 2022 in Glendale, CA. I submitted the following peer reviewed publication in the Literature Exhibit competition.
https://sescal.org/literature-exhibit/
The SESCAL Judging Committee gave me the Novice award as a first-time competitor, and I earned a 90 out of 100 score which qualified my publication for a Large Gold award, one of only 6 out of 42 literature exhibits submitted for scoring to earn that second highest award mark (2 of those 6 also won the highest Grand Awards). I am honored to be in the same Large Gold category with accomplished, renowned philatelic authors such as Roger Brody and Patricia Kaufmann.
A downloadable copy of the Final Exhibit Award Results by scoring rank sits in the publication section of this website.
A downloadable copy of the winning publication sits in the publication section of this website.
Here are my quotes from that article, which concerned whether a parcel cover from 1913 with a 5 Parcel Post stamp and a one cent Parcel Post Due stamp were affixed. if genuine, the cover would established new "earliest documented use" for both the Q5 and the JQ1.
page 638:
"It was a unique opportunity to chime in on an important topic and I felt that non-technical considerations such as human nature and common sense needed to be included. None of us were standing at the Boston Post Office as a witness on 1-1-1913, so everyone's opinion should be worth something if they take the time to review all the facts. "
About me:
"I own stamps from many countries but I have focused my attention on United States and Canadian stamps in the last several years. I will likely move next to Italian stamps and stamps of Spanish speaking countries, as I am capable in both of those languages and have family heritage ties to Italy and Peru. I started collecting stamps around the age of 8 up until my high school years, dabbled very infrequently as College, Graduate school and career took over, and then rejoined in the hobby about 10 years ago. I consider myself as much a stamp detective as a stamp collector. "
page 638:
"If someone wanted to fake this cover, I guess that they would have used a well centered JQ1 with no straight edge and tied it on with full mark that extends onto the envelope to make it more believable. That is human nature. "
page 639:
Regarding postal services and their bearing on the cover:
"The mail packages are prepared, accepted for mailing, delivered and received by people, not robots. People make mistakes and or are not 100% aware of all the rules. I therefore think it unreasonable that anyone should expect that ALL 13 of Expert #3's points must be met to perfection in order for the cover to be genuine. Especially around or on a holiday (Jan 1st), ..."
In my opinion, the cover is genuine.