Congratulations to Jan Stotts for being selected to receive the Walter W. Hopkinson Memorial Literature Award for the best article or series of articles published in The United States Specialist during 2024. The award is presented annually and consists of an engraved plaque and honorarium. This year, the award will be presented during the Society’s Annual Meeting at March Party 2025.
The Hopkinson Selection Committee selected the seven part series written by Stotts. The particulars of his series are:
The Great Americans Issue of 1980-1999. (June) Part-I, overview; (July) Part-II, Cottrell Press Printings; (August) Part-III, Dorthea Dix stamp; (September) Part-IV, Floating Plate Block Issues; (October) Part-V, I-8 Currency Press Issues; (November) Part-VI, A Press Reconfigured Format; (December) Part-VII, A-Press Dollar Sheetlets
The Hopkinson Memorial Literature Award selection committee normally consists of the winners of the award for the past three years. This year’s committee members were Andrew Kelley(2023), James (2022) and Greg Ajamian, Robert Rufe, and Harry Brittain (2021), with Greg, Bob and Harry serving as committee co-chairmen.
The award has been presented since 1954 in honor of Walter W. Hopkinson, a long-time supporter of the Society and specialist in plate numbers. His wife, Mrs. Constance B. Hopkinson, established the award based on his appreciation of philatelic scholarship.
Stotts’ interest in the United States Fourth Bureau Issue led him to join the Bureau Issues Association (BIA). He contributed a 13-part series of articles for its journal, The Specialist, for which he was awarded the society’s 1989 Walter Hopkinson Award for Literature.
Stotts was appointed to the BIA Board in 1991, a position he has held continuously with the exception of his tenures as president of the society. He was appointed to the presidency of the BIA in 1992 and served in that capacity through 1997. After the society changed its name to the United States Stamp Society (USSS), he was appointed as the society’s president and served in that capacity from 2000 through 2002, when he was again appointed to the board, a position which he still holds.
Stotts has been an avid exhibitor since 1980 and an accredited APS judge since 1989. He served on the national Committee on Accreditation of National Exhibitions and Judges (CANEJ) of the APS for eight years (1990-98) and he was a contributor to the seventh edition of the Manual for Philatelic Judging and Exhibiting. His Fourth Bureau Issue material has earned five national grand awards and the 1995 BIA Walter Hopkinson Award for Exhibiting. He was recognized for excellence in philatelic judging in 2019 when he was awarded the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors’ Bernard Hennig Award.
With the approach of the 100th anniversary of the issue of the Fourth Bureau Issue in 2022, he and the Fourth Bureau Issues Committee of the USSS began work on a published legacy resource for the issue. Jay served as editor and the society published the 500-page book, The United States Fourth Bureau Issue 1922-1938, which earned grand awards for the literature competitions at both Chicagopex 2022 and the Great American Stamp Show 2023. The book sold out in 15 months.
In addition to the positions he fills with the USSS, he currently serves as the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors’ director of its Exhibit Critique Service.
A list of previous winners of the award is posted on the Society’s website: here