I started collecting stamps when I was 7 years old. My dad had collected stamps since he was little, and his dad did also. When I was 11, the stamp market was extraordinary, and was shooting up like crazy, along with silver & inflation. I remember somehow acquiring the same stamp twice, I believe it was a mint US 15c Columbian, #238.

I had a little money I think from paper routes, and I’m not sure what else. But when I had two 15c Columbians, I remember thinking I didn’t need the other one, and I sold it. I sold it at a stamp show, for more than I bought it for. I started buying and selling stamps, at a time when stamps were going up in value, and it was difficult to make a mistake. I remember a breakout moment, when I was 12 years old, April 1980, I somehow had a few stamps to sell. I went to the Plymouth stamp show, the largest in Michigan, and sold them to Mel Flotho, long dead now. He didn’t bargain with me at all, he just paid me what I was asking, and I had made a profit on all. Someone came to his table & asked him if he could do better on a stamp that was priced $40, ‘the guy over there has them for $30.’ But Mel wouldn’t go down in price. The guy soon came back & wanted to purchase Mel’s, as the other guy was out of them. “When I’m out of them, my price is $10!” was Mel’s reply.

In November of 1980, I took a booth at a stamp show for the first time. I had an inventory of US stamps that I had worked up & priced. I’m pretty sure I had to leave early to go to Wendy Gordon’s Bat Mitzvah, but I might be mixing up my first and second stamp shows. I think the first one was Nov 9, 1980, something like that.

I started taking booths at stamp shows in the Michigan area, my dad would help me load & drive me there, sometimes staying all day, sometimes picking me up later. When I was 14, I rented a booth at a much larger show, the annual American Philatelic Society show, held in Milwaukee, August 1982. My dad drove me there (maybe 7 hour drive?), and stayed with me the weekend. It was a newsworthy event, and I believe I was interviewed for at least one newspaper, and maybe for the TV news.

The Michigan stamp industry was small, and I was traveling every few weeks throughout high school after that. When I was 15 I remember flying to Miami to a stamp show, checking into a hotel by myself. I did shows all over throughout high school, New York, Cleveland, San Francisco, LA. I was known at a national level, I think I was selling around $50,000 per year.