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Chapter 4. About Stamp Dealers

The little old lady called the expressman to pick up the rather large and nondescript package. This done she sat at her writing desk and addressed a letter. "Dear Mr. Thorp:

I will not be buying any stamps for a while as my son and daughter-in-law have moved from this city for the West. They have asked me to live with them in their new home and have sent me plane tickets. I have arranged here to take care of all of my furniture and things but I did not wish to trust my stamp collection with the other things and it was too large a package to carry with me on the plane: so I am sending all of my stamps everything to you. Please keep these for me until I write you from my new home which I shall do if all goes well. However, I am not too sure that all will go well with me as my heart is not what it used to be and I fear the altitude may not be good for me. Only yesterday, while I was packing my things I blanked out and came to lying on the floor. My doctor has advised me to be very careful but I did not tell him of the plane trip as I was afraid he would not let me go. Neither my son nor daughter-in-law knows of my condition for I did not wish to alarm them and that is another reason I am writing you as I am. If all goes well I shall arrive at my new home with my son and daughter-in-law and no one will be the wiser. However, should anything happen to me I know that my stamp collection will be in good hands. Not that it is worth much but, should anything happen I wish my son and his family who know nothing about stamps to receive whatever little it may be worth. Just to be on the safe side I am carrying a letter to my son with me and in it I have instructed him to write to you about this. You will know that the letter is from my son for his wife's middle name is Elsie and you may identify him by verifying this fact.

I know this letter sounds morbid but it is not intended so. It is just that all of my life I have been careful to keep things in order and, in view of my present health, I do wish everything to be in order in the event that anything should happen.

Sincerely yours,
Martha Smith Brown
(Mrs. John King Brown)

I perused this letter with some surprise. I knew Mrs. Brown merely as a client who had made a few small purchases, in total amount perhaps ten or twelve dollars. All of my contacts with her had been by mail for she resided some hundreds of miles away in a distant state. In all we had exchanged possibly a dozen letters in two years. Always her letters had been marked with the same meticulous explanation of her wants which marked the present letter. I had, from time to time, written rather detailed answers to some of her questions. It was heart warming to learn that such impersonal contact had inspired her to demonstrate so complete confidence in myself.

There was nothing to do here but to wait for further instructions from Mrs. Brown - or a letter from her son.

The letter came from the son. The little old lady had never gotten to the airfield. A second heart attack had come quickly. Thanks to her lifetime habit of putting things in order and her kindness in thinking of others her passing left a sweetness that must be inspiring to her dear ones. I shall always remember Mrs. Brown. She must have been a wonderful person.

The incident is completely true excepting only the name of the lady writing the letter. But the feeling of comradeship between dealer and collector which it points up is far from unusual.

This is not just a case of a few well-known dealers being on a friendly basis with a few equally well-known collectors. It is an almost universal attribute of the hobby and exists throughout the country wherever stamps are collected or wherever stamps are bought and sold. Stamp dealers of any center of philatelic activity lunch together, belong to the same societies, plan together and discuss their problems with each other. They support, by becoming members, the various collector societies, attend meetings, serve on committees, help with exhibitions, and serve as judges of competitive exhibitions and no one at any time would ever question their integrity or their fair-mindedness in such matters. When the dealers themselves undertake to sponsor a straight "commercial" stamp show, collectors aid by subscribing to "lounges", holding conventions, and arranging special group luncheons and dinners to take place in connection with the show. Thus each such event, whether it be dealer-inspired or collector-inspired, becomes a meeting place for all philatelists in a common effort to attract others to the hobby and thus enlarge their ranks. The advantage to the dealer of having more collectors for possible clients is obvious. Not quite so obvious are the advantages to the collector, yet the motivating force behind all such efforts arises from the common desire, of professional and amateur alike, to do all of these things for the general good.

Photo by Adrien Boutrelle, N.Y.View of an American Stamp Dealers Association (ASDA) show.

Perhaps in no other business in the world is there so close a bond between professional and amateur.

How did they get that way? A fair question.

Primarily, I think, because every dealer at heart is a collector. He must be, because the financial rewards of his occupation are not usually great. And, on the other hand, every collector at heart is a dealer. He, too, has to be a dealer for his hobby is constantly involving him in trading treasures with other collectors and selling stamps for which he no longer has use. While it is beyond doubt that the dealer is the greatest source of supply for the collector, it is equally true that the collector is the greatest source of supply for the dealer.

But, besides the economics involved, the reason for such a close bond lies deeper and on firmer ground. Because the dealer is a professional and stamp collecting is his vocation he spends most of his waking hours handling and studying stamps. He has opportunity to see a great many collections which the ordinary collector cannot see. And he not only has the time to study stamps but, in fact, is required to know them. Hence, in a large way, the dealer is the source of knowledge. But here, again, the situation is not all one-sided by a long shot. The collector specialist usually knows a great deal more about his pet group of stamps than anyone else. The dealer often depends on such specialists for knowledge which he passes along to other collectors. The outstanding feature of the whole relation is that knowledge is exchanged freely either by word of mouth or in articles both professionals and amateurs write in the various philatelic magazines.

Probably the first professional stamp dealer to set up shop in the world was Stanley Gibbons of London, England. In America the father of professional stamp dealers would likely be John W. Scott. Both of these men had a difficult and uncharted course to follow. Both set out early to publish albums and catalogues of the stamps of the world. Both founded firms that grew to be leaders but that, in time, were to see competition grow up all around them for the hobby they established soon outgrew the ability of any single person or firm to serve its purpose.

At present in the United States the professional stamp world centers in New York City. Here there are hundreds of stamp shops concentrated along Nassau Street and uptown around 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. These stamp stores range from one-man specialists, of which there are a great many, to ground-floor stores employing a number of clerks. Also there are a considerable number of individual dealers and firms engaged solely in selling stamps at public auction, and during the season earlyfall to late spring it is not unusual for several such auctions to take place each week. On occasion two or more auctions will be held on the same day although the auction houses try to avoid such conflicts. It would be difficult to estimate the annual turnover in dollars and cents of all of the stamp dealers in New York. Some idea of the size of this business may be gathered from the fact that a single auction firm will have an annual total sales running more than a million dollars.

In New York, too, is located the famous Gimbels Stamp Department. This is somewhat of a miracle of merchandising for the very nature of the stamp business does not lend itself particularly well to department-store methods. However, under the direction of Jacques Minkus, Gimbels Stamp Department has become one of the large ground-floor features of the store and is one of the best known sources of supply for stamps and albums known to American philatelists. The number of collectors who visit this department runs into hundreds of thousands during any year, and all come away amazed at the enormous stock of stamps and the varied supplies that are available. Gimbels Stamp Department is quite probably the outstanding "stamp store" of the world for here one will find not only an extravagant stock of stamps of the world, from the great rarities to the lower priced items, but also every accessory and aid to the hobby that is published or manufactured. Gimbels not only carries in stock all kinds of stamp albums. It really is an amazing operation which has gained a national, even international, reputation.

During one of frequent exhibits in Gimbel's stamp department, Mr. Bertil Renborg (left), first postmaster of the United Nations, and Mr. Jacques Minkus (right), manager of the stamp department, examine a preview of the first United Nations stamps.

Located in small towns within easy commuting distance of New York are many specialists who prefer to operate their business from their homes. These dealers have international reputations as experts in the fields in which they specialize and are often consulted by, and in turn consult with, the professionals who maintain business establishments in New York or in others of the country's stamp centers. Such dealers are of considerable importance to the fabric of the commercial world of philately for, by and large, they represent a large proportion of the buying power of the advanced collectors, whom they often represent at the public auctions.

Located on Bromfield Street and along Tremont Street is the stamp center of Boston, a city that can proudly boast of being one of the oldest stamp centers in the nation. Here the activity of New York is repeated with stamp auctions, specialists and small stamp stores generously sprinkled throughout the area. And again one will find the specialist dealers located in surrounding towns. Chicago's "Loop" section along South Dear-born Street and its immediate vicinity is another of the nation's important stamp centers. In the shadow of its sprawling City Hall Philadelphia stamp dealers conduct an important business. And in the smaller towns of Pennsylvania, at its Capital, Harrisburg, in Pittsburgh, Allentown, and in many of the other cities, stamp dealers hold forth lustily. In the South, Miami and St. Petersburg and surrounding areas have a sufficient number of stamp dealers to boast two chapters of the American Stamp Dealers Association; and in New Orleans' "Old Quarter" along Royal Street one encounters some of the leading dealers of the nation. On the West Coast San Francisco and Los Angeles compete for leadership with a considerable number of well-known professionals located in either city, while to the north Portland and Seattle take the lead.

There are stamp stores in Denver, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Atlanta, Washington, D. C, and, in fact, in almost every important city of the nation. In neighboring countries one will find important stamp centers at Toronto, Montreal, Havana and Mexico City. And dotted throughout the United States, in small towns and cities there are literally thousands of "approval" dealers conducting their business through the mail. Many are part-time dealers who piece out their income in this interesting manner and some devote full time to the project, doing what by all standards is a considerable annual turnover.

All larger dealers in the principal cities and the specialist dealers are personally known to each other, for they gather at the national conventions and great stamp exhibitions which are held periodically at various cities. Such gatherings are of great importance to dealers and collectors alike for often such meetings will be the only occasion when the dealer has opportunity to meet his clients in person and vice versa.

But while this camaraderie exists to such a marked degree among the stamp professionals, each is an independent competing with the other. It is unlikely that any other business is so completely free of "cartels" or restraints. The smallest and the largest operates in a completely free market.

To "police" their activities, the dealers have formed a national association, the American Stamp Dealers Association, to be a member of which one must subscribe to a "Code of Ethics" which is quite possibly one of the strictest codes of any commercial group. Through this organization disputes are settled by arbitration boards, penalties are levied on those who may break the rules, and thefts and counterfeiters are tracked down. Because of its activities the ASDA not only has saved many thousands of dollars for its members by apprehending thieves but also has similarly aided collectors. Not a few collectors today owe the recovery of their collections to this active dealers organization.

Just how effective it can be was demonstrated when a swindler set up shop in Montreal for the double purpose of swindling dealers and collectors. This fellow sent out "Want Lists" to dealers all over the country. Such requests were accompanied by what appeared to be reputable references. At the same time he solicited orders from collectors. His was a large-scale operation involving over a hundred thousand dollars in both directions. Almost before he got started, however, a report was made to the ASDA Executive Secretary in New York who immediately contacted the postal authorities in Canada. Within hours the swindler was apprehended and caught with the material. Within a month the Canadian authorities had successfully prosecuted the man and sent him to jail. The Canadian postal authorities then returned all stamps to the dealers who had sent them in good faith and, aided by the ASDA, even succeeded in sorting out and identifying the owners of the material which had been unpacked by the thief. When the operation was completed, all in a very brief time, practically a hundred per cent recovery had been accomplished. In fact, so quickly was the thing done that many dealers learned of it only when they had received the return of their stamps from the authorities. The same effective aid is offered to collectors who may have been victims of theft or swindle. A report to the ASDA immediately swings into action the machinery of the organization and within days, before the material can be sold, every member throughout the nation and the many overseas members are notified to be on the watch and are supplied with a complete description of the material stolen. When the material is located, as it often is, the thief is apprehended and the material returned to its rightful owner all without cost to anyone. The ASDA is as quick to act upon the complaint of a collector as it is for a member and all complaints, however trivial, are carefully investigated and the trouble corrected. Still another evidence of the unity of the great family of philatelists!

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