American Philatelic Society Annual Show

Every year in August the APS has its annual meeting and bourse. Lasting four days, the meeting begins with Board meetings for APS brass and continues with a dealer bourse on Thursday through Sunday. Various specialty societies have their meetings at the show and there is a large and well attended dealer bourse where a collector can look through thousands of items that are for sale, valued at many millions of dollars. Two large national philatelic auction companies are holding their auctions in conjunction with the show and these sales have some very interesting items. If you like stamps and want a pleasurable hobby experience, you would have a good time going to the APS show this year. Except that it is in Columbus Ohio! The APS has long had a policy of moving the show around to various regions which is meant as a kind of fairness, allowing people of different regions to drive and attend a show. But the reality is that the shows are usually equally inconvenient for all and often in a place that is very difficult for a collector to convince his family to visit. Columbus Ohio is at least a six hour drive from Chicago and at least ten or twelve from every other major population center. Because of Columbus’s small airport, plane fares are high (from Philadelphia for instance $781). Last year the show was in Richmond. Richmond is a great city and so is Columbus, but consider this possibility. Suppose the APS Convention were in the same place every year on the same weekend (say Chicago). Every collector would know well in advance where and when it is going to be and could easily schedule a visit to a place that he could excite his significant other into going to. We have a group of hobby officers at the APS who are clamoring to make philately more family friendly and then put the APS show in places that only the most devoted philatelist will visit and then only by himself. It’s true that the APS has had this geographic policy for many years but the rationale of “we have always done it that way” is no reason to continue a bad policy.