A guarantee can mean many things. A satisfaction guarantee means that the seller promises that if you are unsatisfied with your purchase he will refund your money and take the product back. This guarantee is standard with most American retailers. Buy a shovel from Home Depot, take it home, find out that you really needed a spade, and you can return it providing you haven’t used it. Fine and easy. But philately is a little different and I want to tell you how Apfelbaum is very different from any other seller.
Most stamp sellers guarantee your satisfaction and so does Apfelbaum. But only Apfelbaum offers a lifetime warranty of genuineness. Now such a warranty is only as good as the expertise, financial strength and durability of the company offering it. But Apfelbaum have been selling stamps professionally since 1910 (that’s right, we have a copy of a 1910 US census report where my great grandfather, Maurice, listed his occupation as “stamp dealer”) and we think our guarantee really means something. A couple of years ago we refunded on a $1Transmissippi that we had sold in 1963. The owner hadn’t gotten around to sending that item out for a certificate for a while and when he did it had come back as reperfed. Now there are limits to our guarantee,(you need the original receipt and illustrated catalog from which the stamp was purchased, you can’t have damaged the stamp yourself, and we won’t refund because market conditions have changed) but we don’t think you’ll find a better, safer, more comprehensive guarantee on any product anywhere in the world.