I was born on January 26, 1923 and have been collecting stamps since 1929. As a kid we used to swap stamps, one for one, as we had no idea what a stamp catalog was. Later on the Scott catalog came in to use, and I used to keep a small loose-leaf book with my stamp swapping records. I remember my dad taking me to the post office in Brooklyn, NY in 1933 to buy a block of four of the 50 cent zepp with a plate number. I did not know that the block should have been six. I have always wanted to be a stamp dealer, and in my high school days, I used to sell stamps to my teachers. WWII arrived and I found myself in the US Air Corps for 34 months. This "vacation" put a crimp in my stamp collecting for awhile, but on my return to civilian life, I started right back into it. I remember in 1947 with all the servicemen returning home, stamp values shot up like a rocket, as the demand was more than the supply, but the following year, 1948, prices came down. I was a member of the Flatbush Philatelic Club in Brooklyn for several years, and later when I moved to Queens, NY I became a member of the Long Island Stamp Club. In 1957, I moved to Uniondale, L.I., NY and my life as a part-time stamp dealer began. I took a booth at NASPEX, the Nassau-Suffolk Philatelic Alliance Show, and also set-up each month at the monthly show for the next thirty-two years until moving to NJ. I remember that at one of those NASPEX shows, the dealer next to me, wearing sneakers, was a young kid named Greg Manning. During the last fifty years I got to know many of the great people in philately, especially Herman "Pat" Herst, Jr, and Mortimer Neinken.
In 1969, my interests moved to Deltiology, the collecting of picture post cards, so now I became a dealer in stamps and post cards. I remember the other dealers at the shows thought that I was nuts selling post cards, but when they saw my booth packed with people buying them, many joined the ranks.
I participated in stamp and post card shows from 1957 to 2002, doing as many as forty shows a year, and travelling all over the country doing them. When my son was about to get married, his fiance's parents asked what his father did, and he told them about all the travelling to shows, and they wanted to know if we had a home.
Well, now the shows are a thing of the past, as they are just too difficult to do, with the lugging, and lifting, etc, so I have filled the gap with a massive mail order business, plus many lots on Ebay. I find that there just is not enough hours in the day, as I really could use a fifty hour day, or perhaps more, as I keep plenty busy.
Contact me at rgnpcs@optonline.net if you are interested in finding out what I have to offer in both stamps and post cards
