A few years ago, while attending a general estate auction, I stumbled on my first Zeppelin cover. It was between the pages of an old ledger book. Within the ledger were also a couple pages of mounted stamps.
The ledger was jammed into a peach basket along with a slew of old picture frames.
Luckily no one else leafed through the ledger. Because of that, my first Graf Zeppelin cover is my least expensive.
I would come to learn later, it's also my only non philatelic Graf Zeppelin cover. More importantly it would bring about "my brush with Philatelic celebrity".
I was watching a documentary a few nights ago about the Hindenburg crash. One of the experts they interview is a woman I recognized. Her name is Cheryl Ganz and I had met her at the World Stamp Show when I attended the Zeppelin Study Group meeting. Son of a gun, who knew?!
I had brought this cover to the World Stamp Show, knowing I would attend the Zep meeting and thinking I might gain some info about it. One of the first things I've learned about Zep covers, they're mostly philatelic creations. This one though..., I thought might be different.
The scheduled speaker for the meeting couldn't attend. So the meeting turned into a show and tell led by this very interesting and enthusiastic woman..., You guessed it, Cheryl Ganz. At the time, I had no idea how prominent she is in philately.
https://news.uic.edu/smithsonian-mu...traordinaireI showed my cover and explained my dilemma. I wasn't sure if it's considered philatelic. It was flown purposely on a local German flight, and then delivered to the senders nephew in Brooklyn by other means. Cheryl asked me how I knew it was a nephew. I told her, "because of the contents of the letter".
Well...I couldn't imagine saying no when she asked if she could read the letter. She was so enthused and genuinely interested. It was priceless to be part of her world for a few moments. She read parts of the letter aloud, pausing at one point and saying something along the lines of, "this is why we do this". Unabashed enthusiasm!
So that's my tale of philatelic fruit plucked from an old peach basket for the price of some dirty old picture frames...
I love this hobby.
Posted 04/03/2017 10:32 pm
