Mark Morrow
Occupation: President, Mark Morrow Stamps, Inc.
Nicknames: Sugar Bear, Junior, Deep Purple
Hometown: Denver, Colorado

Company Website:
Mark Morrow Stamps, Inc.

Affiliations:
Mystic Stamp Company

Legal Matters:
Department of Justice

Don Sundman owner of the Mystic Stamp Company has described Mark Morrow as a close friend and stamp buying expert. At the company website Mr. Sundman writes:

Mark has 35 years of experience valuing and buying stamps. Mystic is America’s most active stamp buyer, so Mark has purchased well over $30 million worth of stamps for Mystic in the last three years alone! Mark is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced stamp buyers in the world today.

A previous posting on the company’s site claimed Mr. Morrow is the all-time, number one buyer of collectible stamps citing a purchase figure of one hundred million dollars over a ten-year period.

Mark represents himself to customers as the Chief Stamp Buyer for the Mystic Stamp Company for more than 30 years. Often the he will tell or infer to customers he is a longtime employee of the company.

He entered the business, while a high school student, working at a Southern California stamp store. He soon went on his own attending stamp actions in New York City while yet a student. His business dealings took precedence over education as he did not graduate high school.

I good-humoredly refer to him as a stamp buying savant because of his amazing ability to quickly and accurately value stamp collections. Give him an hour in a room of stamps and he will know more about the accumulation than the collector who owns it.

Mark has no equals and is seldom outmatched when it comes to evaluating stamp material, negotiating and deal making. In my view there are several reasons for his success:

Math Ability and Memory, this is his single biggest advantage when working a stamp deal. His skills exceed what you learn in school and fall into the “gifted” category. Imagine just how many varieties of United States stamps have been issued since 1847. Then think about the volume of colleterial material that comprises most collections. All these items have a value and all those numbers are stored away inside Mark’s head, no Scott catalogue required. Really, his knowledge of stamp values is better than a Scott’s as it reflects current market values. His internal knowledge base also includes worldwide stamps. In all the thousands of stamps deals that I witnessed over the years with Mark, seldom did he require an outside price reference.

Work ethic, this man knows how to work. I am sure Mark is the hardest working man in the stamp business. When on a buying trips he was essentially open for business around the clock. I don’t believe my description can do justice when describing his day to day work activities. If he wasn’t inside the house of a collector evaluating material, he was on the phone talking to collectors or other dealers as we would travel between stops. Typically, we would not make the hotel until 10 PM or later and once inside the phone conversations would continue in more favorable time zones if possible. If not, then email correspondence. When in the New York area it wasn’t unusual that he would have, a driver meet him at the hotel taking him into the city to view dealer collections till all hours. Anything was possible, more on this in another chapter of the book.