Adapted from WESTPEX – The First 50 Years by Kristin Patterson, © 2010 WESTPEX, Inc. · About this history · ↑ History overview
Half the show is the bourse — the dealers. They come from across the street, across the state, across the nation, and across the oceans. They are why exhibitors keep submitting and visitors keep coming back. From a starting line-up of 17 in 1960, the WESTPEX bourse has grown to 73 dealers serving five continents — many of them returning year after year for decades.
The Original Seventeen, 1960
The first WESTPEX in 1960 had 24 bourse tables available. Seventeen dealers booked them. Fifteen were California businesses. Two travelled from the East Coast: United Stamp Company from Eastchester, New York (2,900 miles) and American Eastern Stamp Co. from Baltimore, Maryland (2,800 miles).
Several were also WESTPEX volunteers. Dealer Jack Hughes was a charter committee member; Jory Norballe ran advance ticket sales. The early bourse also drew Western-cover specialists like Marden Ross, auctioneers Harry E. Gray and Robert Lewenthal — fueled by Joe Clary’s and Basil Pearce’s shared passion for Western covers, which made WESTPEX a mecca for that branch of philately from the start.
Going International, 1964 – 1987
The 1964 show drew the first international dealer: K.M. Robertson from Victoria, British Columbia, specializing in British Empire and British North America. He came back for twelve years.
The first overseas dealer arrived in 1968 — Hawaii Stamp & Coin Shop from Honolulu — when WESTPEX expanded into the Jack Tar’s second room (the El Dorado) to make space for thirty-two dealers. By 1969 the count was 36.
The first European dealers came in 1983: Stanley Gibbons, Ltd. and Argyll Etkin Limited, both from London. Dealers from 17 states attended that year; the show had crossed an ocean to find new exhibitors.
1987 brought the first Southern-hemisphere dealer: Gary Watson from Melbourne, Australia. That same year, with growing youth attendance Friday mornings, dealers who welcomed young customers attached a small yellow happy-face sticker to their booth signs.
The Long-Termers
By WESTPEX’s 20th anniversary in 1979, three dealers had come every year since 1960:
- California Stamp Company — founded by an Oakland Tribune stamp editor in 1906, bought by John Siwakowski in 1950 while still a U.C. Berkeley student.
- Globe Stamp Store — Berkeley and Walnut Creek, run by Parker L. Hayden, Jr. Hayden’s father started the famous “Old Stamps” Sunday-morning radio segment on Berkeley’s KRE in 1936; Parker Jr. continued the broadcast another five years after his father’s death — 27 years of stamp-talk on KRE, the second-longest program in the station’s history.
- Mr. and Mrs. Marden F. Ross of Oakdale — Western-cover specialists. “The biggest thrill of all,” Marden Ross wrote, “has been the wonderful world of collectors, so many of whom we cherish as customers but most of all as friends. Isn’t that what philately is pretty much about?”
1986 was Hayden Jr.’s and Siwakowski’s 27th and final year at WESTPEX. John Birkinbine II, proprietor of American Philatelic Brokerages — at the show since 1965 — succeeded them as the longest-serving dealer. In 1992 the WESTPEX board surprised him with a medal and engraved plaque marking his (then) 30 years on the bourse.
Birkinbine, in a rare exhibitor turn, won the 1993 Grand Award with “Pioneer Arizona Classics” — entered after some arm-twisting by Patricia Stilwell-Walker, then president of the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society.
The Modern Bourse
By 1991, with the bourse at 66 dealers, the waiting list ran to 34 names. By 1995 the bourse hit 68 from 19 states plus Australia, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, and six dealers from England — Shields Stamps & Coins flew 7,850 miles from Greensborough, Australia.
After Pacific ’97, WESTPEX added a free dealer-to-dealer bourse on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning before the show — a chance for dealers to trade among themselves before the public arrives. It worked so well it became permanent, and continued at the SF Airport Marriott from 2004 onward.
2006 was a milestone: 75 dealers from five continents (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America) — a global show in scope as well as material. By 2008 the program added booth principals’ names, addresses, phone numbers, and email — a dealer directory worth keeping.
50 Years In
The 50th-year bourse in 2010 had 73 dealers and an auctioneer: 67 returnees and seven new. Thirty-four came from California (13 from Southern, 21 from Northern), 28 from elsewhere in the U.S., and 11 from outside the country. Twenty-five dealers had been with WESTPEX for 20 or more years; fully half had been at the show ten years or more.
The ten longest-running dealers in 2010:
- American Philatelic Brokerages (45 years) — John Birkinbine II
- U.S. Stamp Company (43 years) — Warren Sankey, who has advertised in the program since 1960
- Harry E. Graetz Stamp Co. (40 years)
- Fireside Stamp Co. (38 years) — Mike Campbell
- Colonial Stamp Company (31 years) — George Holshauer
- Lighthouse Publications, Inc. (30 years) — Eric Werner
- Bear Stamps (29 years) — Ted Ashworth
- Stanley M. Piller & Assoc. (29 years)
- Kirk’s Stamp Company (28 years) — Kirk Wolford
- Triple “S” Postal History (27 years) — Tom Gates
Their loyalty — and the loyalty of the dealers who came once and never left — is half the reason the show became what it is.
Adapted from WESTPEX – The First 50 Years by Kristin Patterson, © 2010 WESTPEX, Inc. · About this history →