Visit to a Stamp Store

Made a brief stop at this shop in Perth, Australia, today. Didn't buy anything, yet - quite overwhelming as a first visit to a shop like this. I'll be going back, perhaps looking to get some starters for an Australian collection.

Following up on my visit to Faldor's, here are some photos of a little album I acquired while there. The stamps therein will make a nice addition to my natural history topical collections.

$50Aus works out to be about $33US.

I was back in Ottawa over the Remembrance Day time. I stopped in again at Chris Green Stamps, where I spent a leisurely 3-4 hours perusing a few of his stamps. I also chatted quite a bit with the store manager, David. Quite a nice chap he is.

I bought a second Lighthouse Canada binder. It is a tad pricey for a binder, but it LOOKS fantastic! Same with the American binder I also have. I purchase 1 Russian stamp (only 1 from a set of 3) commemorating Vitus Bering; 1 French stamp; 2 Chinese, 4 Faroe Islands, 2 Greenland; 2 or 3 American joint issues, and a whack of Canadian. All those Canadian will fill most of the holes in my collection. Well, at least to 1984. I suppose I will continue on to 1999 or 2000. Chris Green does mail order, which is great since I don't plan to go back until September for the next Canada Army Run.

Here's a shot of my view of the ceremonies. I should have been on the street to my right to view the parade of military vehicles & soldiers after the ceremonies. They say 32,000 were in attendance. The Prime Minister & Governor General & dignitaries entered the compound just to the left of the photo. Too many vehicles meant one had to be very quick to get a shot. I was too cold to be bothered, and in 2 years in the Arctic I had never felt so cold as I did this Remembrance Day!



Great time was had at the store. Always great to GO to a store & just peruse to your hearts content! I'll have to do mail order with them for sure!

It certainly is! Do you know him?

I suppose I could also add to my previous post by saying that buying stamps that are not the primary interest of a particular dealer is a strategy I have used on several occasions with pretty good success.  One tends to get better prices and find a less-detail-oriented approach on those sorts of items, meaning that good finds can be made.

A case in point: Whenever I go to the WESTPEX show in California, I always look for a certain dealer who specialized in stamps of Asia.  But I don't buy Asia from him, I buy his country mini-collections that are not from Asia.  These are the leftovers from WW collections, after he has separated out all the Asia material.  He just wants to get rid of that material, so he offers it at a significant discount from catalogue, and I have found that there have been overlooked surprises lurking in those lots.

In one particular instance, I found some Lombardy-Venetia issues tucked into a lot of classic Austria, but never identified for what they were, either by the original collector or the dealer.  The stamps were hinged into the spaces along with the regular issues from Austria, which have a similar design.  It is mainly the currency and colors that are different, I think.  Anyway, the 3-4 Lombardy stamps easily had higher CV than all the rest of the Austria put together.

This is probably not an original idea, but it is one that has occurred to me over the years, and I have sometimes used it to good benefit.

First off, thanks to Vanessa (rainbowhugz ) for reviving this dormant thread and letting us see a stamp shop in Hong Kong.  I went to HK a few times back in the 1980s, but I am sorry to say that I never looked for any stamp shops back then--I wish I had!  I think my only stamp-related activity then was going to the Post Office to buy stamps that were current at that time.

Anyway, thanks for the post, and I hope you will show us more....

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Phill-lately and Stamps
Stratford-upon-Avon, England, UK

I mentioned in the Whatcha thread that I would be making a post in this thread after my weekend visit to Stratford, and here it is.  This was my third visit to Phill's store, and as usual, I had a great experience and came away with some very nice stamps at very fair prices.  Acquisitions this time were from British East Africa, Cape of Good Hope, Denmark, and Hong Kong.  I will make posts of the stamps in country threads once I get them scanned.


Left: A bit unusually, Phill's shop is located behind a large garden center, a few miles outside of Stratford-upon-Avon.  Right: To get there, you have to walk through the main building of the garden center, exit out the back, and then there is a large courtyard enclosed by smaller buildings, which are individual shops.  Phill's shop is indicated by the red arrow.


Left: The entrance to Phill's shop. Poor camera angle on my part allowed an overhead beam to obscure the shop's sign.  Phill has added a replica plastic red pillar box, which he displays just outside the door when the shop is open.  Middle: A close-up of the pillar box.  Right:  Inside the shop, where I sat opposite Phill at his desk and looked through the material.

Most of my visit I was there by myself, so I had Phill's full attention virtually the whole time.  This was lucky, as during my previous visits, Phill had several other customers at the same time as I was there.  Anyway, it was a very nice visit, and I hope to get back there at least once more before we leave the UK later this year.

Vanessa (rainbowhugz ),I have been to Yang's. In fact, I still own the three catalogues I purchased at my visit in 1994. I was there with my wife on our 1 year anniversary. We were living in Korea at the time and my wife also wanted to visit a Korean colleague and friend that she had worked with for many years who had moved to Hong Kong and was working for Samsung investments.

The catalogues are a bit dated at this point but every once in a while I still reference them because they contain information not included in Scott.

Hey everyone, this is super interesting, do keep posting your various visits so we can build a great list of Places To See as we travel (you know, so later we can report back and say, "Well, I missed the Vatican while I was in Rome, but at least I made it to Giampaolo's Stamp Shoppe, 200 square feet of nothing but Italy #32s!" 

PS. Eh... NO, there isn't ACTUALLY a stamp shop called Giampaolo's Stamp Shoppe in Rome! 

I'm back in France today after spending most of the week in Vienna, where I was attending an IAEA function. I of course went to the UNPA Vienna post office, which is actually a rather small thing tucked away in the corner of one of the souvenir shops:



Unfortunately, there never was any staff there (I went there three times), even during the posted office hours, so I couldn't do any business there. The TSF members that asked for postcards from the UN Vienna Office will have to make do with the one stamp on offer at the more standard gift shop. The displays at the UNPA stand were nice (though, of course, nothing I hadn't seen before) and it seemed the main means of doing business was by filling in a mail order form and putting it in a box for this purpose. Rather disappointing. I get these forms already at home as per my subscription.

I did have a few free hours on my last day and headed downtown to the Westermayr stamp shop, where I bought myself a good chunk of modern Austrian stamps missing in my thematic collections, as well as a new stockbook to put them in. That will keep me busy during the next few days. They were a little more expensive than I had expected, but the stock was impressive. It's in a converted apartment and the two ladies working there seemed to know their business. I'll definitely have to go back. A picture of the entrance hallway at the street level:

Hello all,

Back from Belgium after two weeks. Lots of stamps waiting for me at home, so there will be a few posts about them as well. But, as promised, I made a side trip to Brussels (I was staying in Leuven) to visit a stamp shop there. According to my internet search, there are three stamp shops still active in Brussels, all on the same street, the "Rue du Midi" in the old part of town. An easy walk from the Brussels-Central Train Station and a stone's throw from the Manneken Pis, so almost impossible to miss during any tourist visit. Of the three stores listed, one was closed on Saturdays, and another turned out to be little more than a PO Box, having moved all its business online. But there was one left, called DeLonghe, with an inviting storefront:



I filled up on Belgian Congo stamps from the semi-classical period before independence and immediately after. Prices were near CV rates, so not very cheap, and selection was not quite as wide as I would have liked (they seem to specialize in more modern Belgian material) but there was still plenty enough to fill in quite a few holes in my holdings and make the trip worthwhile. Look out for upcoming posts!

My next business trip will be to Knoxville, TN, in three weeks time. But no stamp shops there anymore, it seems. Although, if there are any TSF members in the neighbourhood, maybe a meeting is possible? 

Many thanks for your post, Xavier (hrdoktorx).  I gave it a "like" but that was to acknowledge its impact, not because I am happy about what you have had to report.  It is a sad day, indeed, when another stamp shop has to close its doors.

It sounds like you had a good run with this dealer in Germany, and I am glad for you and for him.  I have had similar experiences, but of course, those are becoming less frequent with the passage of time.  Brick-and-mortar shops are simply too costly to maintain when dealers can do almost everything online nowadays.  I understand and accept the practicalities of that, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

I started this thread back when, because I knew then as I still know now, that the days of the traditional stamp shops are numbered.  That's why I value each and every one of those places while they are still around, and I patronize them whenever I can.  I want to contribute to their survival for as long as I can, even though they are, as the saying goes, "a dying breed."

I am glad that you had a good 20+ years with your dealer!

I had a nice surprise in the mail yesterday. You will recall, as mentioned earlier in this thread, that my go-to stamp dealer in Germany closed its doors a few months ago. It turns out that another dealer (with whom I have briefly interacted in the past) got a hold of their subscriptions lists, and it is resuming deliveries in place of the old shop. So I got a pair of beauties on approval (which I am approving of), and which will be posted in the corresponding threads shortly. Now that means I have to scour through their web site and build myself another one of my mammoth Excel spreadsheet wish lists... Not the worse summer project to take on. I'll of course keep you posted on how the relationship evolves.