60th Anniversary features

(Read all these features in full in the May 2005 Philatelic Exporter.)

STAMP DEALING: then, now, and in between
By Kevin Duffy
I commenced buying and selling stamps whilst still at college, and emerged as a full time dealer in 1949. In the ensuing years I built a stamp business based on mail order, publishing, and wholesaling, and by 1981, with a staff of almost 80 permanent employees and 120 home workers, accepted a persuasive offer from the Reader's Digest organisation to purchase my business, Seven Seas Stamps.
Having served three separate terms, during 20 years, as president of the Australian Philatelic Traders' Association, and developed an international network of trade contacts, I have continued as an observer of the trade, even if in a now peripheral role.
It is possible to identify three distinct phases in philately and dealing during the 50+ years I have been professionally associated with the hobby: the post-WWII re-establishment and expansion; the boom times of the 1970s and later; and the decline of collectors and dealers in the last 20 years, coinciding with the emerging dominance of the auction houses ...

From Strand to bus-pass
David Rennie reflects on 60 years in stamps
CONGRATULATIONS to the Exporter on getting its bus-pass! Hard to believe that when the first issue was published, I did not even have a stamp album. Mind you, I was only seven.
Two years later, an older cousin, home from the war, gave me his stamp collection, in an old 'Strand', even though I did not know much about stamps. I did however like collecting things: matchbox labels, cigarette cards, cigarette packets (usually minus the cigarettes), pressed wild flowers (illegal today?), coins, and believe it or not, shrapnel, occasionally found on Epsom Common after a stick of bombs fell there during the War. The bomb craters were ideal for newts ...

60 up - and still going strong!
By the editor
IT'S May 1945 - peace is being celebrated in Europe and thousands of British servicemen are being demobbed to resume their pre-war trades and professions, or embark on new careers.

One such serviceman - a Captain M R Musson - launches a tiny 12-page 'magazine' called The Philatelic Exporter with the object of opening up the international stamp trade for British stamp dealers ...

60 YEARS
Les Winick
OUR hobby and business has seen many major changes during the past 60 years. Here are some:
1: a worldwide movement away from the traditional designs featuring heads of state to what is commonly referred to as topicals/thematics;
2: major improvements in stamp production capability; which has led to many innovations such as the need for finer perforation measurements, opportunities for non-traditional shapes, and self-adhesives;
3: dealers now realise that collectors are more interested in what is depicted on a stamp than where it is from; ...