The Importance of Dealer Boxes

I think very few people – and certainly not tax and customs authorities – understand what is involved in stamp dealing and how it is different from other retail activities. It has always been the case, and still is, that most dealers are one-person businesses but holding stocks of thousands – maybe hundreds of thousands - of potentially separate items. The standard business model is to buy in bulk and sell individually. The standard business failure is to buy more than you can possibly sell. So stocks accumulate over a dealer’s lifetime.

In the past, dealers made Approval books (carnets a choix; Auswahlheften) which is what I did when I started. Nowadays they sell on ebay or delcampe (which I have never done). Either way, the time it takes to prepare one item for sale is just too much to allow more than a few thousand items to be offered at any one time. For many dealers, they never get past a few hundred.

The time-saving solution which many dealers use (and I use) is to heap cheaper stuff into boxes, load them into a car or even a van and put them out at stamp shows, where like fresh vegetables you try to sell as much as you can in one day. Collectors or other dealers do the time-consuming work of going through the boxes.

So at the annual Sindelfingen Briefmarken Messe, from which I have just returned, there were hundreds – maybe thousands – of such boxes around the hall. The well-known dealer Peter Harlos had a whole corner stand, well-organised with every item at 2 euro and the well-known dealer Christian Arbeiter had his usual big and rather chaotic stand overflowing with cheap and very cheap boxed material. But these are just two from a few dozen dong similar things.

The boxes are often full of things which are valuable to other dealers or to specialist collectors. If you spend a day going through them, you will handle many thousands of items and surely find something and maybe enough to justify the cost of the trip. It is probably less labour intensive than trawling the internet, bidding and so on.

The nature of stamp dealing and of these boxes means that they are only viable if items don’t have to be bar coded. Harlos does barcode for all his stock down to 4 euro but even he does not do it for his separate 2 euro stand. To insist on bar coding there would be like insisting that each apple have its own label because it is potentially a separate item. 

Harlos and Arbeiter are two of the big attractions at Sindelfingen; whether they actually make money, I don’t know. If you pay say 3000 euro for a whole stand, and on top of that, have travel and hotel costs and not forgetting the stock costs, you have to sell an awful lot at 2 euro to get your money back. It is a problem which arises from the original business model: you buy too much relative to what it is easy to sell.

Many collectors who don’t go to stamp shows are missing something. Unless your Wants are very specialised or very expensive, a stamp show is still a good place to find material

Stamp Shows: Alive, Dying and Dead

Just as Europe's national economies differ, even if they share a single currency, so do their stamp shows.

Major stamp shows in Germany, like those in Essen and Sindelfingen, are very much alive, with dealers always offering new stock, often in remarkable quantity and usually at reasonable prices. Collectors have a reason to visit these shows: there is always something to be found. German dealers are helped by a low VAT rate on collectibles (7%) and they are supported by a very strong network of auction houses. In short, Germany is a lively, competitive market oriented towards collectors.

Germany is the first stop for non - EU visitors who require a Schengen Visa. So you find Russian visitors in German shows. In contrast, England is now rarely visited by Russian collectors and dealers - getting a visa is just too much hard work and sometimes impossible.

France's major show, the Paris Salon d'Automne, is oriented towards postal administrations, notably France's La Poste, and to the sale of official "produits philateliques".

Unless you collect France, you aren't going to find very much at the Salon d'Automne and what you do find is likely to be old stock, in poor condition and over-priced. This is what a protectionist economy produces.

On a visit there this month (I speak French and used to take a Stand but never enjoyed the show or made any money), I managed to spend just 100 euro on material for my stock and 40 euro on one item for my collection. My hands soon felt dirty from the dirty plastics - and some dealers don't even use plastic protection for their stock. As for prices, I found one dealer with prices of 15 euro pencilled on grubby Soviet FDCs and such like of the 1980's ... Is this a record?

It's not as if the dealers are trying to imitate a flea market (marche aux puces). Flea markets actually work by changing stock frequently, and by not being dirty. No, the dealers are just lazy. In addition, they have no network of auction houses to support them - I don't know why, but I guess it is bureaucratic complexity which stops the industry from thriving.

If I was a collector in France, I would head straight across the border to the nearest German show. If I was the CNEP, which runs the Paris show, I would expel half the dealers and try to find some new ones to take their place.

Italy? I used to go to Verona but I can't tell you what it's like now.

Belgium? The Antwerp show used to be very lively (and conducted in a fog of cigar and cigarette smoke)but it seems to have suffered from professionalisation / protectionism - some years ago, small part-time dealers not registered for VAT wre expelled. It did not improve the quality.

What do readers think of other European shows, I wonder?