NAPEX 2010

The Washington, D.C.-area is excited as the date of NAPEX 2010, its major stamp show of the year, approaches.

NAPEX 2010 runs Friday through Sunday, June 4-6, at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner, 7920 Jones Branch Drive, in McLean, Va. Admission and parking are free. There is a special hotel rate at the Hilton of $130 a night for out-of-town NAPEX visitors.

The World Series of Philately show features more than 225 frames of philatelic exhibits, 27 literature exhibits, a single-frame exhibit "Alphabet Challenge" competition, 68 dealers, three postal administrations (U.S., United Nations and Nordica), seven first day cover cachetmakers, an auction, three stamp societies' annual meetings and meetings of more than a dozen other organizations, a U.N. first day ceremony and a U.S. stamp unveiling ceremony.

NAPEX 2010 is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Pony Express, and its show cancels commemorate the mail service. The show will offer three different engraved two-color cachets, one for each day. One will feature a horse and rider, another has the San Francisco cancel, and the third has an early locomotive, since the route eventually became the central route for the transcontinental railroad.

Christopher Corbett, author of Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express, will speak about the Pony Express at 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 5.

As a WSP show, the winner of the Grand Award of the stamp and cover exhibit competition at NAPEX 2010 will be part of the Champion of Champions competition at APS STAMPSHOW 2010. The winner of the multi-frame philatelic exhibition will receive a Waterford Biscuit Barrel worth approximately $450.

As an added incentive for exhibiting at NAPEX, the show will pay the multi-frame Grand Award winner's entry fee into the annual Champions of Champions competition at APS STAMPSHOW 2010 in August, and the entry fee for the single-frame Grand Award winner into the Single Frame Champion of Champions at AmeriStamp Expo 2011 in February 2011.

Stephen Reinhard and James Graue will head the exhibition juries at NAPEX 2010. Reinhard, of New York, is also chairman of the American Philatelic Society's Committee on Accreditation of National Exhibitions & Judges.

His panel for the stamp and cover exhibits also will include Pat Walters of New Jersey, Alfredo Frohlich of Florida, David Herendeen of Nevada and William Schultz of Pennsylvania. Graue, of Washington, will be chief judge for the literature competition. His colleagues on that jury will be Peter Martin of Connecticut and Guy Dillaway of Massachusetts.

NAPEX 2010 will host a first day of issue ceremony for several United Nations stamps and stationery that are being issued June 4, 2010. The NAPEX ceremony will begin at 2:00 p.m. in Martinique's at the Hilton. Admission to the ceremony is free and open to the public, and the stamps will be available for sale at the show.

The stamps include two stamps with designs by Christopher Corr, a 3-cent stamp showing people from around the world and a 4-cent with multicultural people forming the skyline of New York City; a 98-cent aerogramme featuring a UN air transport vehicle; a $9.80 souvenir sheet commemorating the Shanghai World Expo, and showing the Shanghai and New York skylines; and a 44-cent stamped envelope in two sizes, showing cherry blossoms at UN Headquarters in New York.

Earlier in the day, at 11 a.m., NAPEX 2010 is hosting an unveiling ceremony for the U.S. Negro Leagues Baseball stamps, which are scheduled for release in mid-July. Washington was home to three Negro League pro teams?the Elite Giants (1936-37), the Black Senators (1938), and the Homestead Grays (1937-48).

"Black baseball has a longer history here than almost anywhere else in the country," said NAPEX director Jill Piazza, who is organizing the event.

The three national stamp societies holding their annual meetings during NAPEX 2010 are American Air Mail Society, the Colombia/Panama Philatelic Study Group, and Society of Australasian Specialists/Oceania.

Other groups meeting at NAPEX this year include the Universal Ship Cancellation Society, the American Topical Association, American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors, the American First Day Cover Society, the Ebony Society of Philatelic Events and Reflections (ESPER), the International Philippine Philatelic Society, Society of Indo-China Philatelists, the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society, the Virginia Postal History Society, the Virginia Philatelic Federation, the Virtual Stamp Club, the Souvenir Card Collector's Society, and Women Exhibitors.

The Virtual Stamp Club meeting is at 12 noon on Sunday in the Mount Vernon Room.

The dealers at the NAPEX 2010 bourse include some of the best-known names in retail philately, and feature stamps, covers and philatelic books from the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth, the Confederate States of America, Asia, Scandinavia and the rest of the world. The dealers come from as far away as , Britain, California and New Mexico for this premier stamp show.

There will be a Cachetmakers Bourse on Saturday, June 5, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in Martinique's. A cachetmakers bourse is an event where producers of first day covers - those who design and print the "cachets" or designs on FDCs - sell their products, and only their products.

Alan Blair Auctions will conduct a public sale at 1 p.m. Sunday, with viewing scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

Five local Washington-area clubs will be represented in the Club Sales Room, open throughout the show in the hotel's Sully Room on the lower level: AAFSW Book Fair-Stamp Corner, the Bowie Stamp Club, Lions/Stamps for the Wounded, the Springfield Stamp Club and the Washington Stamp Collectors Club.

Earlier this year, NAPEX, the first WSP show to go online, in 1996, relaunched its Web site, and became the first major stamp show in the world to embrace social networking web 2.0 technologies. It now has a Facebook fan page and a Flickr group for photos from the show.

For more information on NAPEX, visit www.napex.org.