The E-Sylum:  Volume 10, Number 46, November 11, 2007, Article 17

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON MAYNARD SUNDMAN

[This week the New York Times published an article on the
late Maynard Sundman of Littleton Coin Company.  Here are
some excerpts.  -Editor]

F. Maynard Sundman, a stamp and coin dealer whose innovative
mail-order marketing, using everything from comic books to
matchbook covers, introduced millions to the once exclusive
worlds of philately and numismatics, died Oct. 31 in Littleton,
N.H. He was 92.

Mr. Sundman's breakthrough came in 1952, when a nationwide
ad in Sunday supplements offered a free set of 10 stamps
from Bohemia and Moravia depicting Adolf Hitler.

“The mail just flooded in,” recalled Mr. Sundman's oldest
son, David — a total of half a million orders, exhausting
the world's supply of the stamps.

Mr. Sundman has had “a huge impact in the stamp industry,
primarily with the marketing to nonestablished collectors,”
said Ken Martin, deputy executive director of the American
Philatelic Society. “Most people aren't going to start off
paying a thousand dollars for a postage stamp. A collector
starting out at $5 a month may become a customer for $50,
$100 a month in a year or two.”

Frederick Maynard Sundman was born on Oct. 17, 1915, in New
Britain, Conn., the only child of Frederick William Sundman
and Floy Rae Maynard. He graduated from Bristol High School
in 1935; that year, operating out of his parents' house with
$400 and a small line of credit from a prominent stamp dealer
in Boston, he started the Maynard Sundman Stamp Company.

He shut the company a few years later and, from 1941 to 1945,
served in North Africa and Italy with the Fifth Army, earning
a Bronze Star.

After the war, Mr. Sundman moved to Littleton and started
the Littleton Stamp Company with his first wife, Fannie
Kasper of Terryville, Conn., whom he married in April 1941.
The company started in a one-room office on Main Street in
Littleton; the couple lived down the street, over an A.&P.
store. Today the company employs about 350 people and
occupies 85,000 square feet.

Mr. Sundman's first wife died in 1993. He remarried in 1994
and is survived by his wife, Dorothy; his sons from his first
marriage, David and Frederick, both of Littleton, and Donald,
of Skaneateles, N.Y.; his stepdaughter, Jeanne Joslin of
Canterbury, N.H.; his stepson, Richard Joslin of Littleton;
eight grandchildren; and four stepgrandchildren.

His sons David, president of the Littleton Coin Company, and
Donald, president of the Mystic Stamp Company, have endowed
a lecture series in his name at the Smithsonian National Postal
Museum and another at the World's Fair of Money, the American
Numismatic Association's annual convention.

To read the complete article, see:
Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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