The Way Philately USED To Be
I'm a sad traditionalist and far too sentimental. I embrace change (see me blogging?), but I yearn for the past and what I perceive to be the better and less hectic life it offered. Of course, anyone who lived through the "better" times knows that they actually weren't better, but it's how sentimental people like me like to think.
So much has changed in our hobby, especially in the internet era, that it might be fun to time travel back to a more genteel time for our hobby.
It was a time when there used to be strange places called Stamp Shops, where collectors could see the wares in albums, windows and wall displays, and were served by men in suits.
Shops like this one. The premises of W.S. Lincoln of Oxford Street, London. The picture was found in an old Lincoln album. Note the caption - "The Largest Stamp Shop in the World". That's the kind of advertising that wouldn't be allowed today without proof!
The inside of the shop was a veritable Aladdin's cave.
