Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
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Is/was this the shop in downtown Lancaster CA? If so, visited a few times.
Are there any shops remaining in north LA County incl SFV?
Recently dropped in at the once vibrant First Sun Show in Van Nuys. Only a handful of dealers remain. Now includes a large postcard component.
Understand the Glendale show is no more. There was a time when there was a bourse/show in the greater LA area nearly every weekend.
Can remember our eldest daughter (fellow collector) accompanying me to a variety of shops which once graced the SoCal philatelic landscape. Where she would paw through boxes of low-priced material.
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I do not see how stamp stores and show dealers can survive without also selling online. Unless one already owned the real estate, the ongoing rental, taxes, etc. adds up and competing with online sellers.
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09:21:45am
" ... the ongoing rental, taxes, etc. adds up and
competing with online sellers. ..."
Plus, (actually a minus) the stay at home attitude
of so many elderly collectors, where they actually
have a greater range of products to look through.
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But the internet does not have the atmosphere of a stamp show or a stamp shop.
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My only thought about a local stamp usually comes when I run out of a specific size mount and want them now and willing to pay list price.
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Decades ago, when I was working in commercial aviation, there was a running joke:
How do you make a small fortune in the airline business? Start with a large fortune.
And (unfortunately), suspect this maxim may also apply to the retail (brick and mortar) stamp store business.
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We lost one in Edinburgh because the landlord wanted to sell the property but without a sitting tenant.
The other one in Edinburgh is closing as the owner is retiring. The shop goes and 4 or 5 auctions a year that he organised are going as well.
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We also lost the stamp shop on Hickman Road in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa that I used to go to in the winter, called "Coins, Stamps, N Stuff." They took out all the stamps and supplies and renamed the place, Central Iowa Coin and Bullion. They sell coins, gold & silver, and rocks & minerals, but nothing to do with stamps now.
Linus
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Same for all hobby shops! The model hobby is going on-line as well because of the same challenges. Shops are shutting down as owners retire and cannot sell the going venture.
One extra coffin nail is the proliferation of Hobby Lobby, who puts model kits on sale for 40% off every other week.. selling them for about what a retail shop actually pays a distributor!
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My wife and I retired in 2001 and moved from Prince George, BC, 800 km (500 miles) north of Vancouver, to Vancouver. I was "philatelically pleased," especially since my stamp club in Prince George (the Fort George Philatelic Society) had gone belly up several years before and the towns two stamp dealers has closed their doors. " When we moved to Vancouver, the BC Philatelic Society met weekly just eight or 10 blocks from our apartment, and I soon met a stamp-collecting friend who lived just five blocks from my apartment. There were four stamp shops in easy walking distance in downtown Vancouver. 
Within five years or so, one of the stamp shops closed permanently, a second-one moved out near UBC (a long bus ride), and a third one moved shop to Victoria, which is an expensive day trip from Vancouver, and without a car quite impractical. The fourth one is still open, but I have my standards....
The stamp club, after I became president, had to move from its location in an office building downtown, first to an office building in New Westminster. After a year, we had to move again, to a crummy church basement in Burnaby, the suburb to the east of Vancouver. At least in Burnaby I could stop by another stamp shop, located in Sears at Metrotown Mall, but eventually Sears closed its doors and out went that stamp shop, re-opening, I gather, in Richmond, the suburb immediately south of Vancouver. I could still go to stamp club meetings, but the club had to move again, to another church in Burnaby, but between Covid and walking issues (arthritic knees and feet), I rarely go to meetings. So, my collecting is either on-line or not at all. I will say that some of my best purchases have been made on-line, although I do miss the rather slow, long-wave "vibe" of brick-and-mortar stamp shops. 
And the friend I mentioned, who lived nearby? We actually moved from our first apartment to one just a block away from my friend's apartment. And then, early in 2020, he was diagnosed with a rare prostate cancer and died just before Christmas. 
Bob
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Reminds me of the fishing lodges in town. One after the other they are folding up. But they try to also get top dollars for their properties. One is asking $15 mil for his lodge !
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07:29:40am
" ... One extra coffin nail is the proliferation of Hobby Lobby, who puts model kits on sale for 40% off every other week.. selling them for about what a retail shop actually pays a distributor! ..."
That is exactly how big box stores have put the small town stores out of business for years. They learned it from reading the histories of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil and Andrew Carnegie's Steel Trusts.
C'est la vie.
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Yes CalStamp, this shop was in Lancaster CA, in what was "downtown" some decades ago, but is no longer "downtown". I've been here 46 years, with the population growing from about 22,000 to over 180,000. I do miss the old small town we once were.
You would think a city this large would be able to support many different amenities, but we have recently lost our stamp shop, coin shop, quilt shop, archery shop and range, minor league baseball team, and just so many many other threads that make up the fabric of a community. However, Walmart is still thriving....
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Thanks, Wrangler.
Former long-time resident of the SCV. Worked on many projects in the AV. Suspect the pop is more than 400k given the two cities and surrounding county areas.
Yet regrettably not large enough to
support a brick-and-mortar stamp shop. Or even periodic stamp bourse/shows.
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"You would think a city this large would be able to support many different amenities, but we have recently lost our stamp shop, coin shop, quilt shop, archery shop and range, minor league baseball team, and just so many many other threads that make up the fabric of a community. "
There were two storefronts for rent in local strip malls. My wife remarked that either would be the perfect place for me to open a hobby shop. I laughed! This town couldn't support a hobby shop!
Sooo what's there now? A Vape Shop! In both locations! Apparently this little suburb can support two of those!
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We lost our only nearby storefront stamp dealer in February of 2021.
His Stamp/coin/gold & jewelry shop - Collector's Korner - in nearby Lowell, Michigan was shortly closed following his passing from complications from Covid.
I had visited him at his store many times thru the years.
He was a former Postmaster. We would sit in his store and play cribbage or chess together when it was slow.
His daughter was murdered 11 years ago in N. Carolina.
Here is a link to that article and his passing;
https://www.sentinel-standard.com/story/ ...
https://www.tributearchive.com/obituarie ...
...a very good friend of mine, Rodger is missed.
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A local formerly great "Coins, Stamps, Comics & Medals" shop dropped stamps for a couple years telling me "it's the one area I can't make money". He later focused on supplies only - some stamps reluctantly. He says Fantasy stuff like fake swords apparently is a gold mine from the CosPlay Hipsters.
Dave.
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Neal, who is the one member in our club with more time in grade than myself operates Colonial Stamp and Coin in Kingston N.Y. but Neal no longer sells stamps..if someone comes in wanting to sell a collection he sends them to our club.Neal will order supplies for the club members but he is so busy with scrap gold and silver..if you stop in to chat you have to wait while people selling silver spoons give you suspicious looks.
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01:31:51pm
I think I've mentioned this before, but what the heck... When my wife and I were in university (Acadia, in Wolfville) we would occasionally skip our Saturday morning classes and hitch hike to Halifax via the New Ross Highway, where you might see a car every 5 - 10 minutes, to visit the three stamp stores on Barrington Street. We'd spend hours in the stores, have lunch in a pub in the local mall, Scotia Square, and hitch hike back in the afternoon with our treasures!! It made for a fantastic day and I often remember those day long trips. Now ... there are no stamp stores left in either Halifax or Dartmouth (across the harbour). In the seventies I think there were around ten in total, but those days are long gone. The only feature that still exists from then in my "stamp world" is the fact that my approvals dealer is still Nickerson Stamps, then the father, now the son with the father helping. How many of you can say you've been dealing with the same stamp dealer for 50 years? The last stamp store in the Halifax area closed about 10 years ago, Lighthouse Stamps(?), in Dartmouth. There might still be one person selling from his home, but I haven't been in touch with him for a couple years. The hobby has certainly changed, but I can still remember going through a huge barrel of stamps in one of the stamp stores in Halifax, I found some real treasures there!! Days like that are long gone never to return in this area!
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We have Henry Gitner in Middletown N.Y. about 70 miles away.. he sells at large shows in New York City and i have never been there but i understand he has a large place. People i know have brought him stamps to sell and he took everything.
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'We also lost the stamp shop on Hickman Road in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa that I used to go to in the winter, called "Coins, Stamps, N Stuff." They took out all the stamps and supplies and renamed the place, Central Iowa Coin and Bullion. They sell coins, gold & silver, and rocks & minerals, but nothing to do with stamps now'
He was light on inventory last time I saw him at a show. He represents the APS in referrals for stamp sales, I guess he could still do that.
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Let me chime in on this Nostalgia thread on the disappearing brick&mortar philatelic stores with a positive note:
This store is still here, and strong:
TROPICAL STAMPS INC., Fort Lauderdale, FL
https://www.tropicalstamps.com/
I have visited this store several times to buy stamps for my collection and for my travels.
So I pay extra for my travel mint postage stamps. How many of us have had to use valuable vacation time to deal with
bureaucratic hassle in post offices abroad? And besides, as several writers of this thread have pointed out, it's a great
pleasure to actually look through the available stamps, touch them, and finally, purchase them. With no hassle...
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Coast Philatelic in Orange County California is one of the last brick-and-mortar in the area. Bob used to stay open 6 days a week until Covid, then went to 3 days a week and he says he has maintained sales. Bob is over 80 and does not sell on the Internet, but does travel to shows across the country. He's been doing it all his life and seems to be making money. So it is possible. But I'm pretty sure when he quits the store will shut down like all the rest. I've thought about buying it, but I don't think my wife would want to take that kind of a risk.
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JoeLo…
Coast Philatelics. Costa Mesa? Bob Chisholm?
Interesting little strip center. Featuring three of my interests: stamps, model railroading, and donuts.
Wasn’t there (also) a stamp place on Beach Blvd (Garden Grove)? In a complex which also housed other hobby shops?
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My local stamp shop, formerly run by a kind old fellow who started the shop because his wife wanted him to get out of the house after retirement - he bravely hung on with sadly scant business for the last many years, but alas, another shop is no more.
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06:08:06am
re: Another One Bites the Dust
Is/was this the shop in downtown Lancaster CA? If so, visited a few times.
Are there any shops remaining in north LA County incl SFV?
Recently dropped in at the once vibrant First Sun Show in Van Nuys. Only a handful of dealers remain. Now includes a large postcard component.
Understand the Glendale show is no more. There was a time when there was a bourse/show in the greater LA area nearly every weekend.
Can remember our eldest daughter (fellow collector) accompanying me to a variety of shops which once graced the SoCal philatelic landscape. Where she would paw through boxes of low-priced material.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
I do not see how stamp stores and show dealers can survive without also selling online. Unless one already owned the real estate, the ongoing rental, taxes, etc. adds up and competing with online sellers.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
24 Mar 2022
09:21:45am
re: Another One Bites the Dust
" ... the ongoing rental, taxes, etc. adds up and
competing with online sellers. ..."
Plus, (actually a minus) the stay at home attitude
of so many elderly collectors, where they actually
have a greater range of products to look through.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
But the internet does not have the atmosphere of a stamp show or a stamp shop.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
My only thought about a local stamp usually comes when I run out of a specific size mount and want them now and willing to pay list price.
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12:31:05pm
re: Another One Bites the Dust
Decades ago, when I was working in commercial aviation, there was a running joke:
How do you make a small fortune in the airline business? Start with a large fortune.
And (unfortunately), suspect this maxim may also apply to the retail (brick and mortar) stamp store business.
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01:13:45pm
Auctions - Approvals
re: Another One Bites the Dust
We lost one in Edinburgh because the landlord wanted to sell the property but without a sitting tenant.
The other one in Edinburgh is closing as the owner is retiring. The shop goes and 4 or 5 auctions a year that he organised are going as well.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
We also lost the stamp shop on Hickman Road in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa that I used to go to in the winter, called "Coins, Stamps, N Stuff." They took out all the stamps and supplies and renamed the place, Central Iowa Coin and Bullion. They sell coins, gold & silver, and rocks & minerals, but nothing to do with stamps now.
Linus
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
Same for all hobby shops! The model hobby is going on-line as well because of the same challenges. Shops are shutting down as owners retire and cannot sell the going venture.
One extra coffin nail is the proliferation of Hobby Lobby, who puts model kits on sale for 40% off every other week.. selling them for about what a retail shop actually pays a distributor!
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
My wife and I retired in 2001 and moved from Prince George, BC, 800 km (500 miles) north of Vancouver, to Vancouver. I was "philatelically pleased," especially since my stamp club in Prince George (the Fort George Philatelic Society) had gone belly up several years before and the towns two stamp dealers has closed their doors. " When we moved to Vancouver, the BC Philatelic Society met weekly just eight or 10 blocks from our apartment, and I soon met a stamp-collecting friend who lived just five blocks from my apartment. There were four stamp shops in easy walking distance in downtown Vancouver.
Within five years or so, one of the stamp shops closed permanently, a second-one moved out near UBC (a long bus ride), and a third one moved shop to Victoria, which is an expensive day trip from Vancouver, and without a car quite impractical. The fourth one is still open, but I have my standards....
The stamp club, after I became president, had to move from its location in an office building downtown, first to an office building in New Westminster. After a year, we had to move again, to a crummy church basement in Burnaby, the suburb to the east of Vancouver. At least in Burnaby I could stop by another stamp shop, located in Sears at Metrotown Mall, but eventually Sears closed its doors and out went that stamp shop, re-opening, I gather, in Richmond, the suburb immediately south of Vancouver. I could still go to stamp club meetings, but the club had to move again, to another church in Burnaby, but between Covid and walking issues (arthritic knees and feet), I rarely go to meetings. So, my collecting is either on-line or not at all. I will say that some of my best purchases have been made on-line, although I do miss the rather slow, long-wave "vibe" of brick-and-mortar stamp shops.
And the friend I mentioned, who lived nearby? We actually moved from our first apartment to one just a block away from my friend's apartment. And then, early in 2020, he was diagnosed with a rare prostate cancer and died just before Christmas.
Bob
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
Reminds me of the fishing lodges in town. One after the other they are folding up. But they try to also get top dollars for their properties. One is asking $15 mil for his lodge !
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
27 Mar 2022
07:29:40am
re: Another One Bites the Dust
" ... One extra coffin nail is the proliferation of Hobby Lobby, who puts model kits on sale for 40% off every other week.. selling them for about what a retail shop actually pays a distributor! ..."
That is exactly how big box stores have put the small town stores out of business for years. They learned it from reading the histories of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil and Andrew Carnegie's Steel Trusts.
C'est la vie.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
Yes CalStamp, this shop was in Lancaster CA, in what was "downtown" some decades ago, but is no longer "downtown". I've been here 46 years, with the population growing from about 22,000 to over 180,000. I do miss the old small town we once were.
You would think a city this large would be able to support many different amenities, but we have recently lost our stamp shop, coin shop, quilt shop, archery shop and range, minor league baseball team, and just so many many other threads that make up the fabric of a community. However, Walmart is still thriving....
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06:50:59pm
re: Another One Bites the Dust
Thanks, Wrangler.
Former long-time resident of the SCV. Worked on many projects in the AV. Suspect the pop is more than 400k given the two cities and surrounding county areas.
Yet regrettably not large enough to
support a brick-and-mortar stamp shop. Or even periodic stamp bourse/shows.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
"You would think a city this large would be able to support many different amenities, but we have recently lost our stamp shop, coin shop, quilt shop, archery shop and range, minor league baseball team, and just so many many other threads that make up the fabric of a community. "
There were two storefronts for rent in local strip malls. My wife remarked that either would be the perfect place for me to open a hobby shop. I laughed! This town couldn't support a hobby shop!
Sooo what's there now? A Vape Shop! In both locations! Apparently this little suburb can support two of those!
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
We lost our only nearby storefront stamp dealer in February of 2021.
His Stamp/coin/gold & jewelry shop - Collector's Korner - in nearby Lowell, Michigan was shortly closed following his passing from complications from Covid.
I had visited him at his store many times thru the years.
He was a former Postmaster. We would sit in his store and play cribbage or chess together when it was slow.
His daughter was murdered 11 years ago in N. Carolina.
Here is a link to that article and his passing;
https://www.sentinel-standard.com/story/ ...
https://www.tributearchive.com/obituarie ...
...a very good friend of mine, Rodger is missed.
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02:34:07pm
re: Another One Bites the Dust
A local formerly great "Coins, Stamps, Comics & Medals" shop dropped stamps for a couple years telling me "it's the one area I can't make money". He later focused on supplies only - some stamps reluctantly. He says Fantasy stuff like fake swords apparently is a gold mine from the CosPlay Hipsters.
Dave.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
Neal, who is the one member in our club with more time in grade than myself operates Colonial Stamp and Coin in Kingston N.Y. but Neal no longer sells stamps..if someone comes in wanting to sell a collection he sends them to our club.Neal will order supplies for the club members but he is so busy with scrap gold and silver..if you stop in to chat you have to wait while people selling silver spoons give you suspicious looks.
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
31 Mar 2022
01:31:51pm
re: Another One Bites the Dust
I think I've mentioned this before, but what the heck... When my wife and I were in university (Acadia, in Wolfville) we would occasionally skip our Saturday morning classes and hitch hike to Halifax via the New Ross Highway, where you might see a car every 5 - 10 minutes, to visit the three stamp stores on Barrington Street. We'd spend hours in the stores, have lunch in a pub in the local mall, Scotia Square, and hitch hike back in the afternoon with our treasures!! It made for a fantastic day and I often remember those day long trips. Now ... there are no stamp stores left in either Halifax or Dartmouth (across the harbour). In the seventies I think there were around ten in total, but those days are long gone. The only feature that still exists from then in my "stamp world" is the fact that my approvals dealer is still Nickerson Stamps, then the father, now the son with the father helping. How many of you can say you've been dealing with the same stamp dealer for 50 years? The last stamp store in the Halifax area closed about 10 years ago, Lighthouse Stamps(?), in Dartmouth. There might still be one person selling from his home, but I haven't been in touch with him for a couple years. The hobby has certainly changed, but I can still remember going through a huge barrel of stamps in one of the stamp stores in Halifax, I found some real treasures there!! Days like that are long gone never to return in this area!
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
We have Henry Gitner in Middletown N.Y. about 70 miles away.. he sells at large shows in New York City and i have never been there but i understand he has a large place. People i know have brought him stamps to sell and he took everything.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
'We also lost the stamp shop on Hickman Road in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa that I used to go to in the winter, called "Coins, Stamps, N Stuff." They took out all the stamps and supplies and renamed the place, Central Iowa Coin and Bullion. They sell coins, gold & silver, and rocks & minerals, but nothing to do with stamps now'
He was light on inventory last time I saw him at a show. He represents the APS in referrals for stamp sales, I guess he could still do that.
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re: Another One Bites the Dust
Let me chime in on this Nostalgia thread on the disappearing brick&mortar philatelic stores with a positive note:
This store is still here, and strong:
TROPICAL STAMPS INC., Fort Lauderdale, FL
https://www.tropicalstamps.com/
I have visited this store several times to buy stamps for my collection and for my travels.
So I pay extra for my travel mint postage stamps. How many of us have had to use valuable vacation time to deal with
bureaucratic hassle in post offices abroad? And besides, as several writers of this thread have pointed out, it's a great
pleasure to actually look through the available stamps, touch them, and finally, purchase them. With no hassle...
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10:51:17pm
re: Another One Bites the Dust
Coast Philatelic in Orange County California is one of the last brick-and-mortar in the area. Bob used to stay open 6 days a week until Covid, then went to 3 days a week and he says he has maintained sales. Bob is over 80 and does not sell on the Internet, but does travel to shows across the country. He's been doing it all his life and seems to be making money. So it is possible. But I'm pretty sure when he quits the store will shut down like all the rest. I've thought about buying it, but I don't think my wife would want to take that kind of a risk.
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05:29:41am
re: Another One Bites the Dust
JoeLo…
Coast Philatelics. Costa Mesa? Bob Chisholm?
Interesting little strip center. Featuring three of my interests: stamps, model railroading, and donuts.
Wasn’t there (also) a stamp place on Beach Blvd (Garden Grove)? In a complex which also housed other hobby shops?
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