One of the finest people I ever met was a stamp dealer named Stuart Printz. Stu ran a mail order stamp business from Allentown, Pa, and for many years would come to our auctions to buy stock for his sales catalogs. Stu died in 1992, 24 years ago. And yet, he was such a kind and compelling person that I still think of him often.
Stu Printz had been a systems analyst for Mack Truck, which had a big plant in Allentown in those days. He was careful with his money and began investing in apple orchards and stamps. The stamp business seemed different in the 1980’s – different in outward appearance but essentially the same at the core. The goal always was to buy larger collections and break them down into smaller units for sale. This used to mean going to auctions to view larger collections and accumulations of stamps that could not be illustrated. What Printz did was to evaluate lots, buy the better ones, and break them down into smaller units for his mail order net price catalog and mail bid sales. Printz was very successful, and it was only his untimely death in 1992 at the age of 58 from metastatic cancer that has kept his name from being better known in the philatelic community.
Today, dealers like Stu Printz still try to find larger lots of stamps to break down into smaller units and sets and singles for sale. Instead of having to travel for auctions, dealers can find thousands of scanned larger lots on websites like ours – larger lots that are available for immediate sale.
Stu will always be remembered by me as a kind and gentle and honorable man. And what’s more – he was successful! Not just successful because he had a kind and loving family and numerous friends – but financially successful as well. Sometimes when we look at our business and political world we are inclined to think that Leo Durocher was right and that “nice guys finish last”. But Stuart Printz was one of many people who proved that often nice guys finish first – in every possible way.