Significance Of APS Member Numbers

APS member numbers are expressed by a 5 or 6 digit number (e.g. 075321, or 233105). Lower numbers have been members longer. Sometimes I see member numbers shown as a 4 digit number followed by a 5 or 6 digit number (e.g. 5392-103471). I've never seen the significance explained, but my assumption is that these hyphenated numbers represent life members with the numbers in front of the hyphen being their life number, and the number after the hyphen being their original member number. Am I right?
Also, many years ago APS used to publish a directory with member names, addresses, collecting specialty etc. I think it was updated every 10 years. For obvious reason this was discontinued about 30 years ago or so. As I recall (possibly erroneously) this publication used to have a box that showed what years membership numbers were given out. For example (making this up) it might say #1-877 1887 and #085112-89999 1976. Is this info still available somewhere?

Well, you could just call APS. They are always very helpful with anything that comes up


Peter

howell1018:

You are correct about the hyphenated numbers. The first set of numbers is the Life Member number, the second is the regular.

I joined in 1980 as a life member, and my number is 3351-114777.

On the APS website, they identify which numbers were assigned during each year. See this at https://stamps.org/history/membersh...torical-data

Mike

APS membership peaked at 57,815 members in 1988.

The APS stopped the directory in the 1980s. It was found in the hands of too many house robbers.

I notice some life members just use their life member number and not their original number so no clue on how long they have been a member. You can buy a life membership at any time but some can get it automatically by age and years of membership.