Ohio's largest annual show will take place March 19-21 in Cleveland

The Garfield-Perry Stamp Club will host its annual March Party stamp exhibition, the largest annual event in Ohio for postage stamp collectors, Thursday, March 19, through Saturday, March 21, at La Villa Conference and Banquet Center, 11500 Brookpark Road, Cleveland, Ohio.

This is the first year that the show will be held on a Thursday through Saturday.

March Party is free and open to the public. New collectors, noncollectors and experienced philatelists all are welcomed. Show hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Free parking is available.

The show will host a first-day ceremony at 11 a.m. Friday for the United States Postal Service’s Water Lilies set of four.

The March Party also will feature the annual meetings of the Ohio Postal History Society and the Spanish Philatelic Society, as well as a northeastern regional state postal history exhibiting competition.

From 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, members of the Garfield-Perry Stamp Club will provide free basic (nonbinding) appraisals of stamp collections as a service to the noncollecting public. Also, club members will be available throughout the show to answer questions about stamp collecting.

A wine and cheese party will take place at the show hotel, the Cleveland Airport Marriott, 4277 W. 150th St., Cleveland, at 6 p.m. Thursday.

Meeting schedules and seminars are included in the March Party schedule. 

The bourse (sales area) will include 60 dealers from across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom occupying approximately 100 tables and offering a wide range of philatelic material available for sale, including stamps, covers, postcards, and related literature and supplies.

The 190-frame exhibition includes both single-frame and multiframe exhibits presenting a wide variety of both U.S. and foreign material, ranging from classic early material to 20th-century issues.

The U.S. Postal Service and the United Nations Postal Administration will have postal stations at the show, with their stamps available at face value.

At the youth philately area, free stamps will be available to young collectors.

The March Party is an American Philatelic Society World Series of Philately show. The grand-award winner will qualify for the APS Champion of Champions competition to be held at Stampshow 2015 in Grand Rapids, Mich., Aug. 20-23.

In 2015, the Garfield-Perry Stamp Club is celebrating 125 years of continuous activity as a stamp club. The club meets the first Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. at the Doubletree Hotel, 6200 Quarry Lane, Independence, Ohio.