Last week, three officers of the American Helvetia Philatelic Society met at the American Philatelic Center. Rudy Keller, Bruce Marsden, and Ernie Bergman told me they thought it was the first time that three members of the AHPS had been at the center together. I took a picture of the three of them perusing Swiss books in the library.
They were especially pleased to see The Industrielle Kriegs-wirtschaft issue of Switzerland 1918-1919 displayed on our new arrivals shelf.
After spending one afternoon doing research and visiting the sales department, Rudy spent two days in the library volunteering. He sorted through our vast holdings of Michel catalogs to make sure that we had two copies in good condition of each catalog, and removed any extra copies so that they can be sold.
Of course, as a Swiss collector, Rudy told me he much prefers the Zumstein catalogs, and generously donated a copy of the most recent Zumstein catalog to the library during his visit.
After bringing order to the mountain of catalogs, Rudy then put his extensive language skills to work helping us to determine whether books that had come in as part of a donated library would be of value to philatelic researchers. (We sometimes get non-philatelic books as part of donations, and these are best given to other libraries or sold, because we don’t have room to store material outside of the scope of our collection.)
It’s always exciting to have visitors in the library. We’re especially grateful to Rudy for the gift of his time and talent.