The Butler County Philatelic Society's upcoming 68th annual stamp and postcard exhibition, Butlerpex 2014, will leave a mark of its own on the stamp-collecting world.

Running from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Tanglewood Center, 10 Austin Ave., Lyndora, the event will feature a show cachet or design commemorating the society's 100th anniversary.

“We generally have a commemorative cover (a decorative, stamped envelope) canceled at the show. This year it is the 100th anniversary of the club,” said Vernon Mayer of Slippery Rock, the society's president.

“This year we will have a children's section, a big collection of stamps for sale, and there will be an exhibit by several members and me of some aspect of stamp collecting,” he said.

“There will be 13 stamp/postcard dealers at the event,” said Thomas Sivak, society treasurer and Butler stamp dealer. “The post office will be there selling new issues of stamps.”

“We're going to have a supply dealer this time for the first time in many years. He will have all stamp-related supplies,” Sivak said.

“If people want to bring things in, the dealers will be glad to appraise or purchase their material and that includes stamps, covers and postcards and stuff such as that,” he added.

Sivak said the stamp club came into existence on Feb. 1, 1914, when its charter was signed by eight members.

“We found an old charter in an old stamp collector's collection,” Sivak said.

Today, the group meets at the Tanglewood Center at 7 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month except July and August.

“We have quite a few members, we usually have about 8 to 15 at the meetings,” said Roy Millhouse of Bakerstown, a society member. “We've got 30 to 40 members. Some of them don't get out much anymore, but we will see some of them at the stamp show.”

It was a chance to meet fellow collectors that drew Millhouse, Sivak and Mayer into the society.

“I've been a member for eight to 10 years. I'm not exactly sure when I did join,” Millhouse said. “But I've been collecting stamps since I was a kid, probably for about 60 years.”

“I probably have three to four thousand mostly U.S. stamps,” he said.

Sivak said he has been a member of the society since 1985.

“I used to collect, and I joined the society as a collector. I decided to try to sell some of my material and I became a dealer,” Sivak said.

“My stamp collection began on the day I was born,” Mayer said. “A work colleague of my father sent to me in St. Barnabas Hospital in Newark, N.J., a first-day-of-issue cover, an envelope canceled the first day a stamp was issued, of the New York World's Fair of 1939.

“I guess my father thought it was a neat idea to collect first-day covers for me and my sister,” he said.

Mayer said he has been collecting stamps on and off his whole life and when he found out through friends about the society, “I went down and signed up.”

They all have their favorite stamps.

“Many collectors specialize in stamps of a particular country,” Mayer said. “Some collect topics on stamps. In other words they collect art on stamps, or animals or fish or boats or trains, or any other topic that one might imagine.”

“The two main things I like to collect are the U.S. flag on stamps. It means the American flag is pictured on the stamp along with other things,” Millhouse said.

“The other thing is World War II. I collect a lot of stamps of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and the German occupation of Europe and a pretty good collection of the Allied occupation of Germany,” Millhouse said.

He said it was the pictures and the engraving work that he found interesting about stamps, but “mostly it is the history that stamps tell.”

“I'm doing it as a business right now, but I still collect myself,” Sivak said.

“There is a lot of history behind the stamps, the older stamps especially,” he said. “I think that what gets most people into the hobby is the geography and the history behind the stamps. They are very educational.”

Sivak said, “My most favorite stamp is 'cattle in the storm,' a U.S. stamp issued in 1898. It has a face value of $1. It was for overseas bulk packaging.”

“I specialized in Germany for a number of years,” Mayer said. “It's my heritage, and I spent time over there. Many of the places I visited are on stamps.”

“After a Panama Canal voyage, I became enthusiastic about Panama Canal stamps,” he said.

“Now, I collect world stamps up to 1965,” he said.

<B>WHAT: </B>Butlerpex 2014 stamp and postcard exhibition and sale<B>WHEN: </B>10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday<B>WHERE:</B> Tanglewood Center, 10 Austin Ave., Lyndora<B>INFO: </B>www.butlercountyphilatelicsociety.com