Herbert Bloch

Not many people today remember Herbert Bloch who died in 1987. To the generation of stamp collectors who grew up after World War II, though, Herbert was a god. He had learned his trade (stamp expertizing ) at the feet of Otto Friedl who was one of the most knowledgeable stamp dealers who ever lived. Herbie (like high schoolers, stamp dealers of the earlier generation used their boyish nicknames into their dotage. I called him “Mr Bloch” once and he looked over his shoulder to see who I was talking to) was already an old man when I met him in the early 1970’s. I was in college and working part time in our stamp business when my father arranged for my brother and I to spend a couple of days with him and get some idea how expertizing was done in the classic manor. We went to his old dishevelled New York office (I think now that Herbie was probably the model for the character Bill Pearson in the “Lunch with Pearson” articles that I wrote in the 1970s). Everything was a mess. Herbie’s knowledge was encyclopedic. For unusual things-I remember a Thurn and Taxis cancellation on a 30kr value, Herbie would haul out an original from one of his innumerable reference volumes. For more ordinary things, he would work quickly from his prodigious memory. One used stamp he was expertizing fell on the floor. As he rolled his desk chair back to get it, one of the wheels rolled over the stamp. “Improves the cancellation” he grinned as he looked up at us. He had a reverence for stamps but they were a skill set not a religion. He knew that he was usually right but didn’t mind if he was wrong. His method of expertizing would not be in fashion today.