By Jesse Robitaille
After four decades in the stamp business, Montréal’s Robert Cooperman has seen his fair share of changes.
Cooperman took his first steps into the world of philately in the late 1960s, when he was only eight years old. The young collector quickly took a liking to his stamps, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“I was collecting stamps from all over the world, and I became fascinated right off the bat with the very old stamps,” said Cooperman, now 54, who’s a long-time member of the Canadian Stamp Dealers Association. “I was really captivated by the fact some of them were worth so much money, and I was eager to learn why certain ones were worth more than others.”
In 1980, at the ripe age of 14, Cooperman began dealing at shows part time under the name City Stamp Montréal. By 1984, he had entered the stamp business full time.
“Stamps were an instant passion, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I went into it with all my heart and soul,” he said. “I started off enjoying it – it was great to be able to make some decent money on the side when I first started out – but it quickly became clear to me that there’s a future in this business. I kept pursuing it, and eventually, it grew into something big and special.”
Now celebrating his 40th anniversary as a stamp dealer – and about half a century of collecting – Cooperman has maintained the same keen eye for rare and high-quality stamps he had in the halcyon days of his youth.
Collectors, too, share Cooperman’s fondness for the finer things in philately. In the past four decades, he has grown City Stamp into one of the country’s largest wholesale and retail stamp dealers.
For more information about City Stamp, call 514-875-2596 (or toll-free at 1-800-615-2596), email info@citystamp.ca or visit citystamp.ca.
A full story highlighting City Stamp’s latest milestone, as well as how owner Robert Cooperman is adapting to the pandemic, is published in CSN Vol. 45 #6.