One of the great Apfelbaum family relics is the first stamp album of my Great grandfather Maurice Apfelbaum. Maurice was born in 1873 and this album is an old Scott world wide album inscribed on the inset-To Maur-on his 8th birthday/ Love gmom and gdad” which makes it a gift from his grandparents in 1881. His maternal grandparents were born in the 1820s and had seen the first postage stamps issued and had encouraged young Maurice in philately because of the educational aspects of the hobby.
Maurice took the hobby to heart and was an avid collector by his teen age years. My great grandmother, Sadie, who I knew until she died when I was a young teen, recalled with irritation that even when they were dating that Maurice would spend more time on his stamps than he did with her. Maurice listed on his 1910 US census form that his occupation was a stamp dealer, though this was a part time business for him as it was for most dealers of that time. Maurice and his son Earl, my grandfather, collected together, though probably our family would have never gone into full time professional philately if it hadn’t been for the Great Depression. Earl and Maurice had a wholesale tailoring business, employing over forty tailors. Wholesale tailoring in those days meant that when you went into say Jacob Reeds or Brooks Brothers to buy a men’s suit and it needed alterations, the suit was sent to a wholesale tailor who did the work before you picked up the suit. The Great Depression killed the suit business and the tailoring business went under. Earl and Maurice began to sell off their collections and opened their shop and the full time Apfelbaum stamp firm was born.