Relationships

One of the nicest things about the stamp business is how you keep relationships with people over such a long period of time. Car dealers sell you once and then have years before you call again even if you choose to buy the same car. And sales relationships of that type are ephemeral and rarely meaningful. I have a customer whom I have spoken to several times a month for over thirty years. A few weeks ago he came to my office. A Chicagoan, he came to Philadelphia for the graduation of his grandson from the University of Pennsylvania. I had spoken to him on the phone hundreds of times but had only met him once- twenty five years before. The irony is this. He came to my office exactly twenty-five years after the day I had met him in Chicago for Ameripex in 1986. I know this because on the day I met him I flew home from Chicago to Philadelphia and the next day my daughter was born and he came to his grandsons graduation one day after Alexis’s twenty-fifth birthday. But this is not at all unusual. Most long time stamp dealers can tell you similar stories of people with whom the have had consistent and close relationships for decades as a result of their hobby. I know I look forward each day to the calls I get from old friends and I hope they do too.