By Jill Draper
On the last day of May, H. James Maxwell stayed up past midnight browsing a website listing more than 1,300 sets of collectible stamps, some selling for mere pennies and some for thousands of dollars. And some not selling at all. It was the culmination of a month-long online auction he helped sort, scan and post for the international China Stamp Society.
In the coming weeks he’ll mail stamps to the winning bidders, collecting their checks and credit card receipts from a spare bedroom he calls the “shipping department.” In six months, he’ll do it all over again. Plus, he’ll continue editing and writing articles for the stamp society’s bimonthly magazine, “The China Clipper.”
“I’m like a mouse on a treadmill,” says the south KC retired attorney. “But I’d go nuts if I didn’t have this.”
Maxwell grew up in Kansas City’s Santa Fe Hills neighborhood, accumulating an average number of trading cards sold with bubblegum at Dee’s Drugstore in Waldo. But he was more interested in the postage stamps his father would bring home from trips to New York City. There, scattered along Nassau Street in the Financial District, dozens of dealers would sell packages of 1,000 stamps for as little as $1 in the 1950s.
Maxwell was given five or six packages at a time for rainy day entertainment. He gravitated toward Chinese stamps because they were some of the least expensive. Later he came to appreciate their complexity and their varied images as a window into history.
For example, he has a set of stamps issued during the 1940s. When Japan occupied the country during that time, they reused the Chinese stamps but printed over them with their own language. And when Japan retreated after being hit by atomic bombs, China reprinted over the stamps again. During this same period in other areas of the country, Communists issued separate stamps.
“They tell stories,” says Maxwell, who has learned to recognize some of the Mandarin and Cantonese characters.
By age 13 or 14 he was reselling packets of stamps at local hobby shops and signing up to run a vendor table at stamp shows in Kansas and Missouri, including a big event held periodically at the downtown Muehlebach Hotel.
“I’ve been selling stamps forever. It’s just been a part of my life,” he says.
It remains a big part of his life today. Maxwell is president of the China Stamp Society, which has 550 members from around the world. Established 88 years ago, the society sells stamps, catalogs, album pages, coffee mugs and related items to collectors in some 40 countries. Enthusiasts include millions of people in China, but in the United States the number is dwindling.
When stamp collecting was more popular, the society had 16 U.S. chapters. Now there are three. The society’s huge lending library of more than 18,000 books recently was shipped to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. due to mounting storage costs. And stamps from older members increasingly show up for sale on the society’s website.
Some of those are Maxwell’s. At age 79, he’s begun to part with major pieces of his collection, “little niches I’m not interested in anymore.”
Still, he enjoys attending stamp conventions. He’s traveled to China a dozen times, Taiwan six times, and several times each to Japan and England. In August he’ll be at the Great American Stamp Show in Hartford, Conn. along with an exhibit he put together titled, “Offspring of the Erie Canal.” It depicts stamps and envelopes from 82 towns that came into being during the canal’s construction in the early 1800s. It might win an award—Maxwell has won several for past exhibits and magazine articles.
A collector at heart, he owns a small assortment of Coca-Cola and Hires Root Beer memorabilia plus the remains of a breweriana collection he sold after publishing “Hometown Beer: A History of Kansas City’s Breweries” in 1999. He spent 10 years editing a second book, “China Stamp Society Specialized Catalog of China to 1949,” a well-regarded resource sold by the society.
“I have certain things I collect for variety’s sake, I guess,” Maxwell says. “It really is enjoyable. There’s such a wide range of stuff.”
And while he claims to be selling stamps from his collection “as fast as I can,” the world is full of stuff.
“If the right thing comes along,” he says, “I’ll buy it.”
Discover more from Martin City Telegraph
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.