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UPSS Logo 200pxUnited Postal Stationery Society

The UPSS will hold their annual meeting at Rocky Mountain Stamp Show this year. This will include their annual Board of Directors meeting, annual membership meeting, and a society table. Stop by their table register as a member or to just learn more about collecting postal stationery.

CYPHER Stamp Club - Youth Activity

We have a new “Wide World of Sports” activity for older children. Children can pick up a copy of one of our new “Passports to Adventure.” These are inexpensive, beginning stamp albums focusing on a small geographic region of the world. The passport includes basic information (country size, population, government, etc.) for each county of that region as well as room to hinge/mount stamps in the passport. We will have a limited number of passports for South America, Central America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. A new special booth feature will be our “Mystery Board.” Children visiting the Youth Booth, and completing the activities, will have the opportunity to win a mystery packet of stamps. Of course, we will have our usual activities ready for children –Greetings from America, Design a Stamp and our ever-popular Treasure Tubs. We are introducing a new activity, “The Botanical Expedition,” which follows along the line of the “Wildlife Safari.” On Sunday, we are hosting a Boy Scout Stamp Collecting Merit Badge Workshop. Seating is limited to 12 Scouts and registration is required; due to limited resources drop-ins are not permitted. Visit the CYPHER Stamp Club website –Cypherstampclub.com for information on this Merit Badge Workshop. We welcome all children to stop by and visit the youth booth. Adults, who are young at heart, are welcome too! 

 

Scout stamp 150x94  Scouting Merit Badge Workshop 

 
Join Donald Evans on Sunday May 28th at 10am for work session on merit badges.
 
Sign up is limited to the first 12 individuals.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
If there is additional interest  we can set up a waitlist for cancellations or setting up
another merit badge class at the RMPL later.
 

CNPS to join the annual Rocky Mountain Stamp Show

 CoNPS logo hi res 250pxWe are pleased to announce that the Colorado Native Plant Society will have a complimentary booth at the upcoming Rocky Mountain Stamp Show on Memorial Day weekend, May 24-26, 2024.

Rocky Mountain Stamp Show (RMSS) is the premier annual show in the Intermountain West for lovers, collectors, students, researchers of postal history and postage stamps. The theme of the 2024 Show is Celebrating Native Plants of Colorado. 

The Show venue is the Arapahoe County Fairgrounds, 25690 East Quincy Avenue, Aurora, Colorado. The show website is www.rockymountainstampshow.com .

Show hours on Friday and Saturday are 10 AM to 6 PM; Sunday from 10 AM to 3 PM. The Show will feature dealer booths, exhibits of stamps & postal history, activities for youth including work towards a Boy Scout merit badge in stamp collecting, meetings of various stamp collecting societies, including the Colorado Postal History Society. The US Postal Service will have staff present on Friday and Saturday. The Rocky Mountain Philatelic Library holds its annual silent action at the Show.

The Show engages with one or more food trucks since the Fairgrounds are out on “the prairie landscape.” Or you can bring your own. In addition, the Colorado Postcard and Paper Show will have its spring event at the Fairgrounds on Friday and Saturday. 

There is a long-standing connection between love of plants and nature, and stamp collecting. The American Topical Association has many flowers, trees, and other plants on their member-only check lists of various topics to collect. The US Postal System has issued many sheetlets and individual stamps showing landscape, flora, and fauna.

If you are a CNPS member who collected stamps in the past, or never did and would like to find out more, this Show is for you. It’s also a fine opportunity for collector attendees to learn more about Colorado’s wonderful plant ecology.

If you have questions, long time Colorado conservationist Steve Bonowski (Colorado Mountain Club & others) is doing some of the Show PR. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  (no spam please!!).

The CNPS will have a booth at Rocky Mountain Stamp Show. Stop by and say hello!

 

The Third day stamp... 
RMSS Bird

This year we again follow what has become a tradition at the Rocky Mountain Stamp Show of having a special “stamp” for the final day of our event.  This practice developed several years back when the U.S. Postal Service declined to participate in the final day of our three day show. We always have had a show cover with a special cancel for every day if our annual event. We refused to end the practice and created the Rocky Mountain Stamp Show “Ghost Post” for the Third day cover. This was hardly a novel idea as during the Centennial-Bicentennial Colorado had a “Ghost Post” from 1975 to 1977. Along with the late Steve Datz created a Colorado Local Post the practice of issuing a “stamp” to honor local events. Part of this need is that the Postal Service ignored the actual Centennial of Colorado by not issuing a postage stamp, as had been the tradition for decades, in 1976. Covers would add postage and designs.

Protest stamps were issued by the two “Local Posts” in 1976 along with the many other events and in 1977 a Colorado stamp was issued.

The RMSS Ghost Post in the tradition of the COLORADO GHOST POST prepared a special souvenir sheet along with Stamped envelope cachets. To avoid conflict with any postal concerns the denominations were not given in the dollar and cent values but but used far more universal representations of actual value- GOLD.

Now gold is measured in Troy ounces which is subdivided into 20 pennyweights (dwt). Thus the actual denomination (dwt Au) on our stamps reflects in this years example is 1/100th of a pennyweight, which is a 20th of an ounce of gold. If you want a better understanding on weight -the US one cent piece when minted, has an actual weight of 2 pennyweights. Thus the US 1 cent piece is the same weight as 2 dwt or  1/10th of a troy ounce. With gold at near $2000 a pennyweight would be about $100 and this the face value of this years stamp would be $1.

Special Cinderella sheets for the show usually have a Ghost Post as part of the sheet along with the years “stamp”.

The Local Post Collectors Society ( APS Affiliate) and its bi-monthly Journal, THE POSTER, have recorded all of our stamp show covers and issues. It participates this years as it did last year in helping to provide our stamps at very modest costs. Editor: Scott Abbot, 31 Lorden Dr. Milford, NH 03055 – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Stop by the cachet and information table to get your special stamp.