The Fall Mega Show was once again held in Madison Square Garden in the heart of Manhattan. The show floor was occupied by 79 dealers, five postal administrations, and ten societies, including the United States Stamp Society. Our booth was staffed throughout the four days of the show and served as both a meeting place for current members as well as a means of attracting show attendees, although for the first time in many years, we didn’t sign up any new members. Our Society banner along with a display of our current books, reprints, and past copies of The Specialist made an attractive showing and did result in good publication sales figurers.

A special thanks goes out to Dave Steidley, Jacques Schiff, Jr., Bob Rufe and Jim Kloetzel for helping man the booth at different times. As always, we are deeply grateful to Tom Jacks of Mountainside Stamps for hauling all of our booth supplies to and from the show.

The Fall Mega Show, unlike the Spring Mega, is not a World Series of Philately show. However, the show did feature eleven Digital Philatelic Studies. These consisted of scanned exhibits and research studies, which had been loaded onto a number of laptop computers situated in a special area of the show floor and available for viewing by showgoers. There was a wide range of material available for viewing, but no U.S.-related studies, although the “Straightline, Fancy and Uncommon Cancels On Confederate General Issue Stamps” did come close. There were also eleven “live” one and two frame exhibits from members of the British Empire Study Group on the floor.

Even though the weather was pretty terrible on two of the four days, overall, the attendance seemed to be good, and the dealers I spoke with were happy. The fact that the show included the first day of issue for five new U.S. stamps certainly helped. The USPS booth always seemed to be busy.

As mentioned earlier, our booth was a popular place for members to get together and exchange information. Although most of those who stopped by were from the immediate area, we were pleased to meet members from as far away as Florida, Ohio, Delaware, Massachusetts and Illinois. Those visiting the booth included:

Peter Mosiondz, Jr.	Steven Rod	Michael Laurence
Tom Mazza	Benjamin Lee	Lou Sherman
Alan Bush	Alan Berkun	Rick Schwartz
Tom McFarland	Robert M. Levy	Bruce Lewin
Milt Keiles	William T. Crowe	Jim Kloetzel
Henry B. Scheuer	Stephen Breitkopf	Sal Spagnola
Roger Brody	Bert Kabak	Frank Magnavito
Fred Skvara	Dick Celler	Alan Warren
Andy Kupersmit	Tim O’Shea	Robert Rufe
Labron Harris	Mark Sommer	Edward Schmid
Harvey Mirsky	Steve Belasco	Rob Loeffler
K. David Steidley	Ronald Harris	Andrew McFarlane
Stash Polchinski	Jacques Schiff, Jr.	Jerry Davis
Frank Braithwaite	Jim Boyles	Al Parsons
Cheryl Ganz	Andrew Marussich	Brian Bleckwenn
Carl Knudsen	Murray Eskenazi	Greg Sutherland
George Feehan	Paul Bourke	Tom Jacks