The American First Day Cover Society in 2024 is honoring cachet artist Tom Mueller as its Court of Honor cachetmaker. The Santa Claus cachet 
is taken from a 1991 cover for the Holiday Celebrations issue with Santa in a chimney (Sc. 2579).
AFDCS Court of Honor No. 44 was serviced with singles of all the U.S. holiday issues, including Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, and with all of this year's holiday first-day postmarks. They are available for sale in the Marketplace section of the AFDCS website.
Mueller, a self-taught Midwestern artist, began producing his hand-painted "Silverwing" cachets in 1990 (Dwight Eisenhower, Sc. 2513), and continued designing for new issues until 2006, concentrating then on add-
on cachets. Most are one of a kind. His 1991 cachet for the Basketball stamp (Sc. 2560) won the top award in the AFDCS Cachet Contest and his work was featured in a gold-medal exhibit by Anthony Dewey shown at St. Louis Stamp Expo this past March. Nearly three dozen of his family members attended the show to celebrate his philatelic career [photo left; Dewey is second from left in the back row]
An article on Mueller by Patrick J. Morgan [on the left, blue shirt, second row] appeared in the November-December 2021 issue of First Days, the official journal of the AFDCS.
The Court of Honor series commemorates cachet artists who have, over the years, contributed so much to the hobby through the beauty of their art. It began in 1981 and the first artist honored was Ralph Dyer. There has been a new Court of Honor FDC every year since then. Stamps with Christmas themes are used because the U.S. issues new ones every year. A different artist is selected each year. (The original Mueller FDC is shown above.)
Many of the earlier years' covers are also available.
