Linn's Stamp News
Jay Bigalke (jbigalke@amosmedia.com)
Jay Bigalke returned to Linn’s Stamp News as editor-in-chief in 2017 and brings a wealth of experience with him. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the Scott catalogs.
In 2005, Bigalke started his philatelic journalism career at Linn’s, where as senior editor he covered U.S. stamp stories.
He left Linn’s in 2014 to become editor of the American Philatelist, the journal of the American Philatelic Society, and Philatelic Literature Review, the quarterly publication of the American Philatelic Research Library.
Bigalke is a 2005 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he studied retail and journalism. He began collecting stamps in 1991, at the age of 9.
He credits his great-grandmother with sparking his interest in stamp collecting when she gave him postcards franked with U.S. 4¢ Abraham Lincoln stamps. He grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and frequented the local post office and became friends with the postmaster.
Bigalke is a fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society of London, a member of the American Philatelic Society, Collector’s Club of New York and many other philatelic organizations.
He was the inaugural recipient of the American Philatelic Society’s Outstanding Young Adult Philatelist award in 2008 and in 2011 he was inducted into the Wisconsin Federation of Stamp Clubs Hall of Fame.
Denise McCarty (dmccarty@amosmedia.com)
Denise McCarty is managing editor of Linn’s Stamp News. A graduate of Bowling Green State University in Ohio with a degree in journalism, McCarty has more than 30 years of editorial and writing experience with Linn's Stamp News. In addition to specializing in the reporting of worldwide new issues, McCarty oversees the editorial content of Linn’s Stamp News each week.
McCarty's collecting interests include the postal history of her hometown of Brookville, Ohio, and stamps related to her hobbies of nature photography, hiking and visiting national parks.
Charles Snee (csnee@amosmedia.com)
Charles “Chad” Snee is a senior editor of Linn’s Stamp News.
Snee is an accomplished philatelist, with more than 20 years of professional editorial, reporting and writing experience in the stamp-hobby media. In 1999, he was hired as an associate editor for Linn’s Stamp News, where he worked for seven years, eventually rising to senior editor in 2003. Following a Navy Reserve deployment to Afghanistan, Snee joined the Scott editorial staff in 2007. In 2011, he became editor of the Scott catalogs and served in that role until 2019. He enjoys collecting the stamps of Ireland and Scandinavia, as well as United States postal history.
Snee and his wife Lynne reside in Troy, Ohio. They have three daughters: Katelyn, Charlotte and Margaret.
David Hartwig (dhartwig@amosmedia.com)
David Hartwig is an associate editor of Linn’s Stamp News. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in anthropology from the University of Toledo and later earned a master’s degree in English from the same university. Before joining Linn’s Stamp News, Hartwig spent parts of his professional career teaching college writing courses, working as a greenhouse grower and editing content for a marketing department.
Hartwig finds the same fascination with stamp collecting as he did studying ancient peoples and contemporary cultures in his college anthropology courses. Western Ohio postal history, topical stamps and literary first-day covers interest him. These interests fit well with his established hobbies of reading and exploring nature in his local area.
Scott Catalogues
Jay Bigalke (jbigalke@amosmedia.com)
Jay Bigalke is editor-in-chief of the Scott postage stamp catalogs and album line in addition to being editor-in-chief of Linn’s.
Donna Houseman (dhouseman@amosmedia.com)
Donna Houseman is editor-at-large of the Scott postage stamp catalogs, which include the 12-volume, worldwide Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers and the Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps and Covers 1840-1940. She is the lead editor of the Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps and Covers 1840-1940. Houseman has 47 years of professional editorial, reporting and writing experience in the stamp-hobby media.
She authored five best-selling Philatelic Gems books published by Linn’s, and edited and contributed to numerous other books, including the popular Linn’s U.S. Stamp Yearbook series. She developed and edited the Linn’s Handbook series.
She was editor of Scott Stamp Monthly from 2007 until she joined the Scott catalog team in 2010. She has been the lead editor of the Scott Classic Specialized Catalogue of Stamps and Covers 1840-1940 since 2011.
She was instrumental in the development of Linns.com and ZillionsofStamps.com.
In 2017, Houseman was inducted into the American Philatelic Society Writers Unit No. 30 Hall of Fame.
Houseman is a passionate collector of the stamps of Ireland, County Cork postal history and stampless covers, and Great Britain stamps used in Ireland.
She is married to husband Rick and enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, watching basketball and walking with her poodle.
Charles Snee (csnee@amosmedia.com)
Charles “Chad” Snee is a contributing editor of the Scott postage stamp catalogs in addition to being a senior editor of Linn’s Stamp News.
Martin J. Frankevicz (mfrankevicz@amosmedia.com)
Martin J. Frankevicz is the new issues editor of the Scott Postage Stamp Catalogue. He started collecting stamps as a teenager, trying to fill his Scott Minuteman album up with cheap 3¢ commemoratives, and building up a small collection of plate blocks fresh from the local post offices. He freely admits he has not used them all up for postage. He began his career in 1981 as Scott’s album and supplement editor, when Scott was located in New York City. In 1985, he relocated to Sidney, Ohio, when Amos Press purchased Scott and became the valuing editor for the Scott catalog.
In 1999, he took on the challenge of listing the never-ending torrent of new stamps. More than 280,000 different philatelic items have passed across his desk during his tenure as new issues editor, which equates to more than 4,000 pages in the various catalogs. He has written the occasional article for Linn’s Stamp News and the Scott Stamp Monthly over the years, many of which humorously describe the historical, trivial, quirky and bizarre sides of philately often found in new issues.
Contributing Editors/Correspondents
John Hotchner, a Linn's writer since 1977 and a contributing editor, is the author (since 1987) of the weekly U.S. Notes column. He collects the United States in depth and worldwide EFOs (errors, freaks and oddities), and exhibits stamp separation methods, U.S. auxiliary markings, the 1934 U.S. and Great Britain Christmas seals, and Hubba Hubba handstamps on Korean War military covers.
Hotchner is a national and international stamp show and philatelic literature judge, the founder or cofounder of six ongoing national stamp groups, and an expertizer for U.S. material. He was a 16-year member of the APS board of directors, including serving as the APS president from 1997-99.
He is immediate past president of the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors. He served as vice president of the AAPE from 2006 to 2009. He is a member of the National Postal Museum's Council of Philatelists and served on the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1998 to 2010.
Hotchner retired from the U.S. Department of State in May 2008, and in 2011, he retired as a consultant to the interagency Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center.
The same aunt who interested Bill McAllister in journalism gave him his first stamp album, a Minkus beginner album in 1952. His interest then and now has remained U.S. stamps, especially first-day covers and programs. He began his pursuit of first-day programs after covering a first-day ceremony for the 1987 Girl Scout stamp in Washington. That ceremony prompted him to write a weekly stamp column that appeared in The Washington Post and other newspapers for 12 years. McAllister joined Linn's as its Washington correspondent in 1996 and has continued his interest in reporting how individual stamps are created and the intense lobbying for their approval. He also enjoys getting behind the scenes of the U.S. Postal Service, one of Washington's biggest federal agencies. To McAllister how the mail moves – or sometimes doesn't move – is almost as interesting as the stamps that the agency produces.
Matthew Healey, New York Correspondent.
Matthew started collecting stamps at the age of six, when he lived in Rome and would spend sunny Sunday mornings at the Porta Portese flea market, picking used Italian commemoratives out of the street vendors’ fat stockbooks for 5 or 10 lire apiece.
As a teenager in New York, he enjoyed accompanying his father, Barth, to the vast stamp shows at the New York Coliseum and Madison Square Garden.
As an adult, Matthew found that stamps inspired him to study graphic design, typography and printing, and triggered a lasting curiosity about history, geography, art and the parallel declines of colonial empires and monarchic facial hair.
He writes about Great Britain for Linn's Stamp News and occasionally for The New York Times, mostly on stamp subjects, like his father before him. He is trying desperately to pass on his love of stamps to his three children, with limited success.