One of my greatest enjoyments as a philatelist is creating exhibits of portions of my collection of postal librariana and displaying them at stamp shows. Philatelic exhibiting can be a scary undertaking and I want to mention some resources that helped me make the transition from scary to enjoyable. I joined the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors (AAPE) long before I was brave enough to enter my first exhibit in a stamp show. The AAPE’s quarterly journal The Philatelic Exhibitor (TPE) has proved to be an invaluable tool. Not only does it provide many great tips on improving exhibits, it makes you feel part of this specialized philatelic community. Although you have to be a member of AAPE to get current issues of TPE, the AAPE has very generously digitized all issues of TPE over five years old and placed them on their website. In addition, the tables of contents of the issues for the last five years are provided. The AAPE website includes a wealth of other valuable information for exhibitors. One section includes digital copies of award winning philatelic exhibits.
The American Philatelic Society oversees national level stamp show competitions and its Committee on the Accreditation of National Exhibitions & Judges (CANEJ) has developed very useful information to assist both judges and exhibitors. The most important information provided is in the APS Manual of Philatelic Judging, 6th Edition which is available for download. Although this edition was first published in 2009, it has been revised as of November 3, 2010.
The American Philatelic Research Library encourages exhibitors to place copies of their exhibits at the APRL. These are in both printed and digital formats and are included in the APRL’s online catalog. The APRL would like to work with the philatelic exhibiting community to make more philatelic exhibits available online.
To search the APRL catalog for exhibits, enter “exhibit” in the Record Type box, and then enter a keyword in the Any Word box.