Two works tied for first place in the American First Day Cover Society’s Philip H. Ward, Jr., Memorial Award for Excellence in First Day Cover Literature published in 2022. One recipient was Henry Scheuer, for his two-part article “How the Earliest Collectors Sought Out First Days” in The American Philatelist in November and December 2022. This article also won the 2023 United States Stamp Society’s Barbara R. Mueller Award.
 
The other winner was a book, The Connecticut Tercentenary Issue of 1935, by Peter J. LaPlaca and Anthony F. Dewey. Included in the book is a complete catalogue of all known cachets for the issue, Sc. 772.
 
The runner-up work was the article "Earliest Documented Uses of the Large Bank Note Stamps" by Ralph Nafziger, which appeared in the November 2022 issue of The Chronicle, journal of the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society.
 
Although all articles in First Days, the official journal of the AFDCS, are automatically considered for this award, "I find it interesting that none of these works was published in our journal, " said AFDCS president Lloyd A. de Vries. "Their publication in media not specifically about first day covers shows, in my opinion, the wider acceptance that FDCs are gaining."
 
A complete list of past winners can be found on this page.
 
Philip Henry Ward, Jr., began servicing first day covers in 1909. Although an electrical engineer by trade, he wrote on new issues for The American Philatelist, Mekeel’s Weekly Stamp News and The Weekly Philatelic Gazette in the early 20th century.