NAPEX 2024 Highlights

NAPEX 2024 was an exhibitors’ premier showcase, with 52 different postal displays ranging from beginners to national champions in 225 frames. Approximately 850 people attended the three-day stamp show, including local members of the Postcrossing postcard group, who held a “meetup” at NAPEX for the first time.

The quality of exhibits was the highest ever seen at the suburban Washington, D.C., show, held June 7-9, 2024, in its longtime home at the Hilton hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Members of the convening societies – the Collector’s Club of New York and the American Helvetia Philatelic Society – brought their best work for an intense competition to win the coveted Grand Prize of a porcelain Revere bowl depicting the different phases of construction of the U.S. Capitol.

Exhibits were mounted by, among others, three officers of the American Philatelic Society and two longtime philatelic judges. Three of the exhibits had been the subject of detailed articles published earlier in the year in the American Philatelist.

But it wasn’t just exhibiting pros showing their prized possessions. Four first-time exhibitors – including a 13-year-old girl from Brooklyn – also exhibited in the NAPEX frames.

Patricia Stilwell-Walker and Mark Schwartz at the NAPEX Awards Dinner

The Grand prize, with its coveted Capitol bowl, was won by Patricia Stilwell-Walker for her comprehensive display of Baltimore postal history dating from colonial times to the mid-1850s. Ms. Stilwell-Walker’s exhibit also won the Collector’s Club of New York multi-frame Best U.S. Classics award and the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society medal.

The Reserve Grand was captured by Mark Schwartz for his presentation of the New York postmaster provisionals. The one-frame Grand award went to Peter Schwartz for the earliest black portrayals on U.S. stamps from 1864-1872.

Hollace Enoch with her Delta Sigma Theta Sorority exhibit

First-time exhibitor Hollace Enoch took home the Women Exhibitors Sterling Achievement Award and the American First Day Cover Society Award for her single-frame exhibit of covers honoring members of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

First-time exhibitor Aradhana Alexandra Agarwala won the American Topical Association’s youth and novice awards for her single-frame exhibit of postcards depicting straw hats from different countries.

Awards were distributed at the legendary and always-sold-out filet mignon banquet on Saturday night. “This year, our exhibitors came through yet again with an extraordinary range of material,” said John Schorn, NAPEX show chairman. “We are especially pleased that our show attracts both the seasoned exhibitor as well as the novice.”

Exhibit applications for NAPEX 2025 (June 6-8) will open this Fall via a new, improved website (www.napex.org), where exhibit title pages and synopses will be accessible to all. Exhibitors are advised that NAPEX frames were filled this year by late March and that exhibit frames have hit their full capacity earlier every year. Exhibit submissions are only received via the electronic application on the NAPEX website.

Title pages and synopses must be filed electronically. Early submission of exhibit applications is advised.