The award, founded in 2007, is for the Best Article published in the American Philatelic Society’s journal, the American Philatelist. The award is named for the United States Stamp Society and for one of its most prominent members, authors, and editors, Barbara R. Mueller. Among her many honors in six decades of devotion to philately, Mueller is a member of the Hall of Fame of both the USSS and APS Writers Unit 30. She was the recipient of the APS John N. Luff Award for Distinguished Philatelic Research in 1956.
The award not only promotes research and philatelic writing, but also promotes the USSS, its goals and its mission to the nearly 40,000 members of the APS, approximately 75 percent of whom collect U.S. material
Award Criteria:
1.The nominated article is chosen by the subcommittee from the articles that appeared in The American Philatelist the previous year.
2.The award is presented at the APS’s annual summer awards banquet, and includes a $1,000 prize.
| Year | Winner | Article |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Robert Grossman | I lived on the Butterfield Mail Route for Decades and Didn’t Know it |
| 2023 | Henry B. Scheuer | How the earliest collectors sought out first days |
| 2022 | Otto Kjærgaard | Ocean Letters: using the telegraph to speed ship mail |
| 2021 | ||
| 2020 | J.S. Sawyer | Prisoner Mail System in KL Lublin/ Majdanek |
| 2019 | Ken Lawrence | What items franked with 1913 Parcel Post stamps are authentic first day covers? |
| 2018 | Kathleen Wunderly | The Suicide Club and Hell's Stretch |
| 2017 | Ed Dubin & Al Kugel | World War I |
| 2016 | Henry . Scheuer | Kansas-Nebraska Overprint Stamps |
| 2015 | Jarar H. Sidiqui | Indian Postal Stationery Overprinted for Use in Pakistan |
| 2014 | Robert Gray | Indian Army Postal Service in World War I |
| 2013 | James W. Milgram | Pasteup Usage of Western Express Franks |
| 2012 | Dr. Jerzy W. Kupiec-Weglinski | The Siege of Przemysl 1914-1915 |
| 2011 | Frank M. Hoak III | U.S. Naval Ship Cancels of December 7, 1941 |
| 2010 | Maurice M. Bursey | Confederate Wallpaper Covers from Fayetteville, NC |
| 2009 | Howard W. Geisler | Saarland; A German State with French Philatelic History |
| 2008 | Tom Broadhead | Petite Messages — The Development of Carte de Visite Mail in Nineteenth-Century France |
| 2007 | Steven J Berlin & James W. Milgram | Early Mail Robberies in the United States |