Charles Foster Richards (July 9, 1866 – November 29, 1944), of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, was a lifelong

stamp collector Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects. It is an area of philately, which is the study (or combined study and collection) of stamps. It has been one of the world's most popular hobbies since the late nineteenth ...

and a charter member of the American Philatelic Association (now called the

American Philatelic Society The American Philatelic Society (APS) is the largest nonprofit stamp collecting foundation of philately in the world. Both the membership and interests of the society are worldwide. History The organization, originally named the ''American Phil ...

Collecting interests

Richards specialized in the collection and study of postage stamps of

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

, including

postal history Postal history is the study of postal systems and how they operate and, or, the study of the use of postage stamps and covers and associated postal artifacts illustrating historical episodes in the development of postal systems. The term is att ...

revenue stamp A revenue stamp, tax stamp, duty stamp or fiscal stamp is a (usually) adhesive label used to designate collected taxes or fees on documents, tobacco, alcoholic drinks, drugs and medicines, playing cards, hunting licenses, firearm registration, ...

s, and

postal stationery A piece of postal stationery is a stationery item, such as a stamped envelope, letter sheet, postal card, lettercard, aerogram or wrapper, with an imprinted stamp or inscription indicating that a specific rate of postage or related servi ...

. As an early expert on stamps of Hawaii, he published, in 1916, ''A Check List of the Stamps of Hawaii - and More'', and, in 1938, he added more material to it. He also wrote a paper entitled ''Hawaiian Stamped Envelopes'' which was included, in 1916, in Mekeel's Handbook No. 10, ''Postage Stamps and Stationery of the Hawaiian Islands''.

Philatelic activity

Charles Foster Richards remained active in philatelic organizations and spent much of his time studying counterfeit stamps and recommending that the backs of such stamps be marked by experts to show their lack of authenticity.

Honors and awards

Richards was named to the

American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame The American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame award honors deceased philatelists who have contributed significantly to the field of national and/or international philately. History The APS ''Hall of Fame'' award was founded at the 1940 American P ...

in 1945.

References

Charles Foster Richards
1866 births 1944 deaths Philatelic literature American philatelists People from New York City American Philatelic Society {{US-philatelist-stub

Collecting interests

Philatelic activity

Honors and awards

See also

References