The first stamp dealing Apfelbaum was Maurice Apfelbaum who listed his occupation in the 1910 US census as "Stamp Dealer." He began dealing when his son Earl was only four years old, and by the time Earl was ten, he had begun collecting stamps and was going around to dealer shops and bourses with his father. Stamp collecting was different one hundred years ago than it is today. Most stamp business was done at bourses or in dealer shops, that is face to face, and little stamp business existed outside of major urban centers. Collectors in the country saved up for their annual visits to New York, Chicago, or Philadelphia where they would go to the many stamp shops there and purchase a years' worth of collectibles. Earl and his father continued dealing throughout the teens and twenties, but it was not yet a full time business; rather they dealt their duplicates and did a little trading as so many collectors did in those days to offset their stamp collecting habit.
The Apfelbaums became full time stamp dealers in 1930. The Great Depression killed off many businesses (as it did the Apfelbaum tailoring business), but it was kind to the stamp collecting hobby. Even workers who had lost their jobs could afford a few pennies to add some stamps to their albums, and thousands of collectors tried to become stamp dealers when they lost their day jobs. Earl was an anomaly in the Depression