Book Signing at Vereins Kirche – September 15

Appealing at once to devoted philatelists, Texas and U.S. history buffs, and amateur collectors of all kinds, The Great Texas Stamp Collection offers a unique vantage point from which to view our history as well as the very nature of collecting.  Charles W. Deaton , sponsored by Gillespie County Historical Society will be at the Vereins Kirche on Saturday, September 15, 2012 at 10:00 A. M to sign his new book, The Great Texas Stamp Collection.  Books will be available for purchase.  The book reveals how some stubborn Texas Confederate Postmasters, a handful of determined Texas Stamp Collectors, and a few of the world’s greatest philatelists (stamp collectors) created, discovered, and preserved some of the world’s most valuable postage stamps.

Among the many difficulties the newly formed Confederate States of America endured in the summer of 1861 was the failure of its post office department to provide sufficient numbers of that item most crucial to its service: the postage stamp. Faced with the resulting din of customer complaints, a handful of industrious Texas postmasters solved the problem by simply making their own homemade stamps.

In this thoroughly researched history of these rare and highly coveted stamps, The Great Texas Stamp Collection traces their journey from creation through their rediscovery years later by local, and then international, stamp collectors–a journey that culminated in the sale of a few pieces at a recent auction in New York that fetched more than $250,000. Weaving the larger contexts of Texas and U.S. postal history together with individual tales of greed, intrigue, forgery, and discovery, Deaton’s book is rich with characters from European royalty to early stamp dealers to common criminals, while also providing detailed examinations of the stamps themselves, including a complete census of the stamps now known as the Texas Confederate Postmasters’ Provisionals.

A recipient of the Phillip H. Ward, Jr., Award for Excellence in Philatelic Literature and the Distinguished Philatelic Texan Award from the Texas Philatelic Association, Charles W. Deaton is a professional philatelist and the founder and first president of the Texas Postal History Society. Among his many works on the subject are Texas Postal History Handbook, A Philatelic Guide to the 1936 Texas Centennial Celebration, and Fifty Years of Texas Philately.  Mr. Deaton is a resident of Fredericksburg from September to May and lives in Massachusetts the remainder of each year.