Charles J. Peterson Philatelic Literature Life Achievement Award
Charles “Charlie” Peterson (1933-2009) worked with the International Federation of Philately (FIP) and the American Philatelic Society to turn the idea of a competitive philatelic literature exhibition into a reality – virtually inventing the rulebooks for how to exhibit and judge philatelic literature. He singlehandedly lifted the bar for quality in philatelic publications. Charlie’s legacy is that of “integrity, scholarship, and the unrelenting desire to advance the collective body of [philatelic] knowledge,” qualities that were recognized in his lifetime with the highest accolades offered in philately – admission to the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists and the APS John N. Luff Award (which he was awarded twice).
The Charles J. Peterson Award was established two years after Peterson’s passing in 2009, and is awarded by the American Philatelic Research Library every year to a person who embodies the outstanding legacy that Charlie left behind. Peterson award winners are notable for their dedicated work to further philatelic knowledge through philatelic literature.
Patricia A. (Trish) Kaufmann
Note: Kaufmann also will receive the Luff Award and the John Walter Scott Dealer Award.
Patricia A. (Trish) Kaufmann was introduced to Confederate postal history in 1965 and quickly became engrossed in exhibiting, research, and writing on the subject. She is best known as one of the leading experts on stamps and postal history of the Confederate States.
Her leadership in the hobby has included serving as chair of the Board of Vice Presidents of the American Philatelic Society (APS) from 2017-2022. She was scribe for the APS Campaign for Philately 2016-2022, as well as Chair of the APS Dealer Advisory Committee, 2016-2018. She was the first woman to serve on the board of the American Philatelic Research Library (APRL) from 1983-1989, and also a patron. She endowed the APS with the endowing the Kaufmann Civil War Room in 2019 at the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and is a 2023 APRL Vooys Fellow. She is currently on the board of the Philatelic Foundation, serving since 2021.
She was elected to the Council of Philatelists of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in January 2011, serving unofficially for a year before that. Kaufmann also served as a researcher for their cataloging project, "Arago," which was unveiled May 27, 2006, at the World Philatelic Exhibition. She served during the creation of the William H. Gross Gallery as a founding donor.
Kaufmann has held almost every role in the Civil War Philatelic Society (CWPS), writing and editing extensively for the group’s journal and books, organizing its conventions, and leading its efforts in 2020 to rebrand from the Confederate Stamp Alliance (CSA), broadening its scope, maintaining relevance, and drawing new members. She edited the society journal for a record 17 ½ years from 1970-1987.
She was editor-in-chief of the award-winning Confederate States of America Catalog and Handbook of Stamps and Postal History, published in 2012, which won the Grand Award for Literature at APS StampShow 2013. She is the only woman to serve as president of the Alliance (now CWPS). She was an active member of the Authentication Service from 1996-2014 (18 years), serving as recording secretary from 1996-2007, and now as an emeritus member. She has won nearly all CWPS research, writing, and exhibiting awards, some as many as four times.
As the first employee of John W. Kaufmann, she became a full-time professional philatelist in 1973. She became one of the first women to regularly call philatelic auctions, perhaps the first in the U.S. Among the treasures sold was one of the Inverted Jenny airmail errors (Scott C3a), the first recovered from a block of four stolen in the 1950s from the Ethel B. McCoy collection, sold on behalf of APRL.
In 1989, a year after the untimely death of her husband John in 1988, Kaufmann closed the auction house but continued specialized dealing as a sole proprietor. Her research has led to numerous discoveries in Confederate postal history and stamp varieties. Some of these have upended catalog listings, most notably the 3¢ 1861 Postmasters’ Provisionals, which became a new section in philatelic catalogs. She serves as a consultant to the Scott catalogs.
Kaufmann belongs to numerous philatelic organizations, was inducted into the APS Writers’ Unit Hall of Fame in 2018, and is a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society London. She was asked to sign the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 2023, a philatelic award of international scale created by the Philatelic Congress of Great Britain in 1921 of which King George V was the first signatory. Also in 2023, it was announced she would be a recipient of the Alfred F. Lichtenstein Memorial Award for Distinguished Service to Philately given by the Collectors Club of New York. She signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists of the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society in 2018 and was presented with the Elizabeth Pope Award for Lifetime Contributions to Philately in 2016. She was among those honored by Linn’s Stamp News in 2022 as one of the world’s Most Influential Philatelists.
Kaufmann continues to research and write extensively. Her articles appear regularly in The American Philatelist, American Stamp Collector and Dealer, La Posta, Kelleher’s Stamp Collector’s Quarterly, and the Civil War Philatelist, among others. Her award-winning website trishkaufmann.com is an unrestricted repository for a wide range of information from her research and writing as well as those of others. Her articles and presentations have won frequent awards.
Besides Confederate States, Kaufmann collected and exhibited 19th century Valentines from 1975-1984. She currently collects vintage stamp boxes, as well as studying and adding to her extensive collection of Confederate fakes and fantasies.
Trish is married to Darryl Boyer (whom she declares is “totally lacking the collector gene”), whom she met while scuba diving off the Atlantic coast in 1990. Together, they ran a seasonal wreck-diving charter boat for 15 years while she maintained her stamp business – which she enthusiastically continues online today.
Thomas F. Allen Award
Thomas Allen (1942-2007) ran a successful private law firm in Cleveland after graduating with a Yale Law School degree in 1968, but his first passion was always stamp collecting. Thomas was an expert on Ohio postal history, winning an international gold medal for his Cleveland postal markings exhibit. He also co-authored the book 19th Century Cleveland Ohio Postal Markings (1991), served as president of the United States Philatelic Classics Society, and served as president, secretary, and treasurer for many years with the Garfield-Perry Stamp Club.
The Thomas F. Allen Award was founded in 2013 to promote research and philatelic writing. It is awarded each year by the American Philatelic Research Library to the writer(s) of the best article to appear in the Philatelic Literature Review during the previous year. Past winners have shared new research or knowledge, or offered new and relevant discussions to well-studied topics.
Brian Birch
Birch joined the American Philatelic Society and American Philatelic Research Library in 1976, subsequently becoming a Patron and Life Member of the latter. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society London (1981) and a member of the Collectors Club of New York (1983). Although he had always published the occasional article, retirement gave him the time to at least begin to catch up on all of the projects that had been started and then laid aside for lack of time.
Birch’s article “Look at North America's First Philatelic Periodical” and “The Origin of the Royal Philatelic Society London's Set of The Stamp Collectors Record” is a two-part exploration into The Stamp Collector’s Record, the world’s fourth philatelic publication and North America’s first. Both parts exemplify Birch’s commitment to thoroughly indexing our hobby’s earliest publications and the prominent philatelists of yesteryear.
An excerpt follows:
One usually has to rely on the presence of a bookplate or an inscription in a book for an idea of its provenance. Neither of these are present in the Royal Philatelic Society London’s volume of The Stamp Collector’s Record (1864-1876). However, remarkably, in this case the correspondence involved in the society’s acquisition of SCR’s bound run has survived the intervening 133 years.
I identified the correspondence when I wrote up the Royal’s old correspondence files in its archives. Its survival is really quite unusual as the vast majority of the society’s old correspondence has been destroyed or discarded over the years, encouraged no doubt by two world wars and the need to recycle waste paper, not to mention the perennial problem of lack of space within the society’s building.