BUD SELLERS RECEIVES HIS SECOND LUFF AWARD

Many great contributors to the stamp collecting hobby have to wait a lifetime to see if their fellow philatelists in the American Philatelic Society will honor them with our hobby's highest honor---the John N. Luff life achievement award. In fact, only a handful of collectors ever receive the honor. Not so F. Burton Sellers. After receiving a prestigious Luff Award in 1983 for his vast contributions of research to the hobby, the Society paid the same tribute to Bud Sellers at their 112th annual awards winner at Stampshow 98 in Santa Clara, California, on Saturday night, August 29. This time Bud received the honor for his lifetime of work for the Society, itself.

The honor was a total surprise to Sellers! After retiring from nearly two decades of service on the Society's board in late 1997, the governing body of the organization decided to honor him again---and did so in a secret vote at their meeting last February in Houston, Texas.

At the dinner, after all previous Luff winners (including Sellers, himself) had come to the podium and stood by to hear other award winner announced, William Bauer (chairman of the Luff selection committee) shocked both Sellers and the audience by announcing the special second honor to him. The recipient will completely overcome and virtually speechless at having been recognized.

Sellers has, perhaps, the longest list of achievements ever accumulated by any philatelist in the United States---or in the world, for that matter. He served three different terms as president of the APS, plus stints as president of the Collectors Club of New York, chairman of the 1976 INTERPHIL international exhibition, over a decade on the board of the International Federation of Philately (F.I.P.), and is a signatory of Great Britain's renowned Roll of Distinguished Philatelists. And those are only part of a long, long list of work within and for our great hobby.