The End Of The Chicago Philatelic Powerhouse .

Even the CCC is a shadow of itself in its historic building.

parcelpostguy wrote: Even the CCC is a shadow of itself in its historic building.

Me: Please elaborate, especially with some membership numbers or budget numbers.

PARCEL ---agree things slow down a bit ,the guys my age are dropping dead and the people who would of gotten into detailed philately are missing . All we got now are the kids who want to buy a $10.00 mixture box and then want to know which stamps in those boxes will buy them a BMW .

You mean it's not all of them?????

Yes folks have been dying without others able to fill the departed shoes, including the authors of some of the CCC publications. Plus of those who remain, folks are slowing down as they have a right to do.

Sad to see all those philatelic experts which Chicago had in the 1960- 2000 fade away . Nobody is training to take their place .

I seen this happen many years ago during a stamp auction . I never planned to get involved in this ,as much as I did . During the Regency Stamp Auction . a few large lots of Cinderella material came up for auction . I knew nothing about Cinderella stamps and didn't know the owner who past away ,yes seen him a few times at auctions in Chicago so knew who they wrote about . But zero interest . There was three lots with a opening bid of $1,000 .
The first lot opened at $500.00 with no bids , The owner and auctioneer was David Khols ,he turned to me and said there is a lot of work here in this lot maybe you should look at it ,so being a regular at his auction and him a friend for many years . I decided to raise my card . Little did I know the guy was a leaders and expert in Cinderella stamps nationwide and was part of the Chicago philatelic scene .

Over a few months of working on those three lots slowly build a huge Cinderella collection of my own ,slowly it started to take on real serious part of what my interest are . It grew bigger and can match the WITT CINDERELLA COLLECTION . .

Jim Czyl had was a great guy in stature and had a great collection of fantasies as well. However, he was not an expert on genuine material at all and never claimed to be. The nucleus of actual experts in the US has mostly centered around the East Coast. I think of George Sloane (whose reference collection of forgeries I purchased having gone from Sloane to Elliot Perry to Amb. Middendorf and then to me in 1990). World experts and their collections have mostly been in Europe with the exception of the Herbie Bloch (Mercury Stamp Company) collection which is now, sad.y, also in Europe.

PS - Brookman was in Minnesota, Perry was from NJ, Ashbrook for postal history was from Kentucky.

Richard ---- James Czyl had a great collection of Cinderella stamps and wrote and answered reader questions in a newspaper , so I though of him as the U.S. expert on those stamps ,he had some forgeries . True as you say he never got into having the real stamps / the genuine material for a decent forgery collection .

I see another member of the Chicago Powerhouse has given up his stamp collection .

Dennis Swanson has place his impressive collection up for auction . Both a strong U.S. stamp collector plus has a impressive European countries collection .His material is up at Kelleher Auctions for July 28-29 .

The noted thing and not sure it was made earlier was Chicago Powerhouse was as collectors who spend money to build their collections ,so for the auction firms and the bourse /show dealers ,Chicago was a big factor in their sale numbers .

THE Dennis Swanson?

Rogdcam --- Dennis was a American television executive his bio is on the Kelleher website ,so I didn't care to post it here .

Also others like William F. Csolkovits also past away with massive collections. All part of the Chicago Philatelic Powerhouse .

Chicago does have the best clubhouse ...
New York was on par til they sold theirs so as
to be used as a diplomatic residence of some sort...

Do understand that was the environment I grew up in .

Started out sneaking onto the trains that ran downtown to save 25 cents ,so I can have extra money to buy stamps at John Ross Stamps ,He knew I had $1.50 or $2.00 to spend on stamps and treated me to take my time and look at his massive sales books .
Little that I knew what would happen in my life .

It would put a smile on his face if he knew what happen to those huge Black Binders which made up a huge percentage of his store inventory. After He died his Stamp Shop inventory went to Cherrystone Stamp Auction for sale around 2003/2004 . There was someone from Chicago who came to take them back and his finger prints were on those binders from many years ago . It wasn't the value of the stamps in the binders but the attitude ,he wasn't going home without them and that was the most dangerous buyer at a stamp auction to bid against .

And then the church and most of the brownstones on the block got torn down to build some 17 story monstrosity.