Websites offer numerous philatelic exhibits on variety of subjects

By William F. Sharpe

I typically like to look at the many exhibits displayed at major stamp shows. Traveling to such shows isn’t always possible, but there are many exhibits available for viewing online.

The American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors offers exhibits online. When I visited, I found 15 foreign, 11 topical, 10 United States, and two airmail exhibits.

I was particularly interested in the exhibit “U.S. Personal Computer Meter Postage, A Revolution and a Success” by Tony Wawrukiewicz.

For even more exhibits, click on the word “Links” in the left-hand column any page on the AAPE’s website. You also can access the association’s evaluation service by clicking on “Critique Services.”

The only cost for evaluation of an exhibit’s title and synopsis pages is postage. The AAPE also offers a full evaluation of entire exhibits at extra cost.

You can download a presentation, “How to Create a Philatelic Exhibit,” by clicking on the plus sign next to “Exhibiting” and selecting the first sub-item, also termed “exhibiting.” Other documents about exhibiting also can be downloaded.

The AAPE publishes the Philatelic Exhibitor, a quarterly newsletter. You can view the table of contents for recent issues and full contents of older issues online.

If you are interested in joining this organization, the AAPE provides an application on its website.

The Exponet website has provided online exhibits for some time. I wrote about this site in my column in the May 15, 2006, issue of Linn’s.

The site, which calls itself “the virtual international philatelic exhibition,” is much better organized than it was nine years ago. It now includes more than 800 exhibits from around the world.

I found Wobbe Vegter’s exhibit, “From Abacus to Internet,” under thematic philately.

The exhibit, which presents “a story about the history and evolution of the computer and the many scientists who were involved in its development,” includes several pages devoted to the Y2K bug, where supposedly computers would crash when we transitioned from 1999 to 2000.

Many of the exhibits included on the Exponent site are written in foreign languages. Because the pages are graphical copies, it isn’t possible to pick up the text and place it in an online translator for a quick translation.

The next-to-last entry on the Exponet index page provides an alphabetic index to all the exhibits.

Stamporama, a free online stamp club, offers 20 exhibits written by the group’s members on its website. I particularly liked David Greg’s three-page exhibit on odd-shaped stamps.

Stamporama has an interesting discussion board and a number of other features on its site.

You can fill out an online form to join, but there are a lot of questions to answer on the form.

You can find links to many exhibits.

This page provides links to exhibits from the British Postal Museum, Canadian Postal Museum, and the National Postal Museum’s Arago site.

This About.com site also provides links to Scout exhibits and aerogram exhibits. The link to K. David Steidley’s “Uses of the 1¢ Franklin, Series of 1902” did not work, but a Google search found the exhibit.

The American Philatelic Society presents a number of online exhibits.

Under the “Stamp Collecting” heading in the upper left on the main page, select “Features and Freebies” in the drop-down box and then click on “Online Exhibits.”

You can select from airmail, foreign, topical/thematic, or U.S. exhibits. A link to APS tips and other information about exhibiting also is included.