Stamping out an old collectors’ tradition

Press, 18 April 1981, Page 15

Stamping out an old collectors’ tradition

By

PETER HARLAND,

‘Sunday Times’

lhe stark reality .of recession hit Britain’s stamp collectors last week — Stanley

Gibbons, the oldest, largest and most respected .stamp dealers in the world, , withdrew its famous approvals service. To schoolboys of any age, that is roughly equivalent to saying that "the Bank of England has stopped issuing banknotes. Approvals are little .wallets of stamps, used or unused, which dealers post so you can select what you want “in the comfort of your own home.” Stanley Gibbon is reluctant

to comment. “Everyone here you could speak to is on holiday,” said the press office. But the commercial significance of approvals was spelled out in palmier days by the then sales director of Stanley Gibbons, Cyril Andrews: ‘Few collectors can resist a stamp once they’ve seen it. If you only wrote to tell him about it, he might write back and say, 'Very interesting but I can’t afford it.’ Once he has seen it, he will afford it.”

But the longer a dealer’s customer list, the more stock he has locked up in the post. Add to this the increasing cost of postage (most approvals have to be registered and insured) and the current slump in ; stamp sales, and you have very good reasons for a . dealer taking a long, hard look at his approvals service. Stanley Gibbons, must have had well over $1,200,000. tied up in this way at any one time. Part of the Letraset group since 1979, Stanley Gibbons is being forced to cut back hard on all fronts. The division made a loss of nearly $600,000 in the first six months of its present financial year, compared with a boom-time profit of $6 million on sales of §55.5 million for its first full year under Letraset. William Fieldhouse, Letraset’s chairman, admitted that mistakes had been made and that the $46 million paid for Stanley Gibbons was too much.

A New York office, bought for $243,000 only last November with the aim of holding stamp auctions, will close down next month. Some ancillary activities, started at the height of the Seventies collectors’ boom, may also be closed.

Meanwhile, at its London headquarters in the Strand, Stanley Gibbons is celebrating its 125th anniversary by offering stamps at approximately half the catalogue value.

In a letter to approvals customers, Stanley Gibbons', states:. “We prefer to offer our customers a better and morh competitively priced-, mail-order service.”