Presentations Leading Up to the Show-Schedule Listed Below

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 Just when you thought it was safe to trust your friendly stamp show organizers, they pull a fast one on you. But it's a good one at the same time -- trust me on that.

What does that all mean?!

Well, MILCOPEX has decided to shift the April 13 cover analysis workshop with the Stamp Brothers to a live event at the show, September 25-26 in Brookfield, Wisconsin.   

Postal history is the theme of MILCOPEX 2026, sponsored by the Milwaukee Philatelic Society and scheduled for September 25-26 in Brookfield, Wisconsin.

This will be the postal history equivalent of the old NPR show Car Talk, where “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers” answered questions about cars and life in general. But instead of the Tappet Brothers, if you have a cover that has you stumped – maybe the postage amount makes no sense, or you can’t decipher the markings -- you can draw on the brain power of three prominent philatelists, also known as the “Stamp Brothers”: Colin Fraser, Gary Loew, and Ken Martin.

Colin is a stamp dealer, appraiser, and expert in postal history and coordinator of the MILCOPEX pre-show talks. Gary is a postal historian, author, and retired editor-in-chief of The American Philatelist. Ken is the Director of Expertizing for the American Philatelic Society and will be the chief judge at MILCOPEX. The three of them have well in excess of 100 years of philatelic experience.

Here’s what you need to do: Scan both sides of your cover (preferably at 300dpi or better) and email those with your question(s) to milcopex@gmail.com. The deadline for submitting covers is 7:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 10, 2026. The Stamp Brothers will then select a sample of the submissions to review during the workshop. (They need to be selective since the workshop is only an hour long.) 

Each cover selected will be assigned to one of the experts. During the session, the lead expert will provide the answer(s) plus the research method(s) he used to develop the answer(s). That way, everyone will pick up some tips on how to do their own research in the future. During the presentation, the other two Stamp Brothers will chime in with additional comments, and the submitter can, of course, ask follow-up questions.