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Missourian
January 26, 1986
New profit may put stamp of approval
on philately hobby
A 35-year-old French0born millionaire wants
to rejuvenate the hobby of stamp collecting and make money in the process.
Rousso, the owner and chairman of the International Stamp Exchange Corp.
of Miami Beach, believes he can revive interest in philately with a combination
of publicity and the lure of profit.
In the exchange, which opened in October and which Rousso expects to be
fully operational later this month, descriptions of each stamp, including
the owners’ asking price, are fed into a computer. Potential buyers,
dealers, or individuals who have computers can see the exchange’s
listings of stamps and enter bids on them. If the bid equals the price
asked, the sale is automatically completed by the exchange. If the bid
is lower, the seller can choose to accept it.
There are stamp publications and associations in practically every country.
Individual stamps or collections are ordinarily sold at auctions. Worldwide,
the stamp market is estimated at $450 million a year.
A generation ago, a typical stamp collector would try to complete a particular
collection he was interest in. Today, Rousso believes, many younger collectors
are adding $200 to $500 in stamps to their collections annually, partly
for pleasure but also in the hope of eventual profit.
According to Rousso and other experts, about 95 percent of the children
who star collecting stamps when they are 10 years old abandon the hobby
by the time they reach 15.
“Today young people have many distractions and this is why all of
us who are in this sector must do something to create a new generation
of stamp collectors,” he said in an interview. “After all
it is one of the least expensive hobbies. You can start it with $25, and
some of the stamps obtained for next to nothing can appreciate a hundred
times in 20 or 30 years.”
Rousso says his approach to stamp trading has some detractors. Among them
are experts who, he says, do not like the publicity about selling prices,
older dealers who cannot adjust to the modern technology he uses and auctioneers
who believe-erroneously, he says-that he will take business away from
them.
For his part, Rousso contends that is his computerized exchange increases
the number of people who buy and sell stamps by 10 percent, everybody
in the sector will benefit.
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