Don't throw away your used envelopes and stamps! The Southeast Federation of Mineralogical Societies collects used postage, hunting, and duck stamps to pay for scholarships to Wildacres and William Holland workshops.
Each club collects and prepares stamps and sends them in to the Southeast Federation where they are weighed. Most used postage stamps have some resale value to collectors.
A record is kept of how many stamps each club sends in. The stamps are them sold; 100% of the proceeds from the sale of stamps goes into the scholarship fund. Each year, after the first of September the weights for each club are totaled. Each club gets two to four entries into the lottery, based on how many stamps were contributed. At the annual meeting of the Southeast Federation winning clubs are drawn. The total number of scholarships awarded depends on the amount of money earned from the sale of stamps that year. It is up to each club to decide who get gets to use the scholarship.
Collecting the stamps is easy to do, just collect postage stamps from your mail, your neighbor's mail, mail at work . . . and bring them in to the Rock Club meeting each month.
There are a few rules:
1. the stamps must be undamaged - no rips tears or cut
2. if you cut them off of the envelope, be sure to leave at least 1/4 inch on all sides of the stamp
3. if there is an interesting postmark on the envelope, turn in the entire envelope
4. if there is any type of commemorative marking on the envelope, turn in the entire envelope
5. if the stamp is over 50 years old, turn in the entire envelope
6. foreign stamps are acceptable but do not cut them off the envelope
If you have any questions about what to do, just leave the stamp on the envelope.
We can start collecting stamps immediately, but will not send any in to the Eastern Federation until after September 2006 so that we will have a full year to collect as many as possible.
Draper Lee has volunteered to be the club stamp collector. He will collect the stamps at each meeting, prepare them, and periodically send them in to the Southeast Federation Stamp Committee. If necessary, Draper can have any really old or unusual stamps assessed.
More information on the program and pictures of what to save can be seen at www.amfed.org/sfms/stamp-program.html.
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