Stamp Shows

Forty years ago the stamp selling world was divided into four main methods of sale. There were retail stamp shops, stamp auctions, dealer price lists and stamp shows. Apfelbaum attended over thirty shows a year as bourse dealers and I did most of them. The show life was a hard life. Packing up your stock each week and flying it to a different part of the country, the time changes and the late nights and the constant booth set up and take down. The up sides were that you got to meet more collectors in a weekend than you could usually meet in a year and you got to know them and hear their concerns. What amazed me then and what has made for the tremendous success of the Internet as a selling mechanism for philately is the tremendous diversity in collector specialization. Most collectors maintain basic stamp collections and yet most of the collectors who came to our booth at shows seemed to be looking for things like covers with postage dues used to small islands or state and county postal history. With the millions of philatelic items on offer on the Internet and the powerful search engines, collectors have the world’s supply of stamps and covers on offer every day. For purchasing a $5 Columbian or a set of Graf Zeppelins, stamp shows are still a good bet. For an expensive item it is nice to see it first and meet the seller. But for the vast group of philatelic subspecialties it is easy to see why most collectors and dealers have chosen to meet in the virtual world. By the way, I will be at Orco Expo next week in Southern California and if you would like to meet to discuss the sale of your stamps send me an email or give me a call.