Philatelic Adventures in Paris
by Tom Broadhead (FCPS #2830)

Is Paris the heart of the World of Philately? Certainly the wealth of stamp dealers and a superb museum should bring it close to the hearts of FCPS members. Anyone planning a trip to the City of Lights should devote at least five days – focused at the end of the week.

Several dealers are located on three streets in the 9th Arrondissement – the rue Drouot, rue Faubourg-Montmartre, and rue du Châteaudun. Many of the dealers in this area sell by auction only, but some have retail operations. In fact, there are dealers in almost every arrondissement. Finding them can be a challenge.

The recent Cérès 2002 catalog has an extensive list at the back, but the 9 dealers listed in the “passage des Panoramas” of the 2nd Arrondissement initially proved to be a tantalizing mystery. The “passage” turned out to be a beautiful covered arcade on the south side of the Boulevard des Italiens.

Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, an open-air philatelic bourse is held along the Avenue Gabriel near the Avenue Marigny. Twenty or more dealers set up in covered stalls, offering a wide range of stamps, covers, and supplies. Several dealers have bulk boxes of covers at 2 euros apiece – and it can take a few hours to browse the extensive stocks of just a couple of dealers. For FCPS members, who are also movie buffs, this is a key site in the 1964 motion picture, Charade.

If one becomes tired of shopping, but not walking, the Musée de La Poste is the crowning stop on the philatelic tour. Located at 34 boulevard de Vaugirard (not the rue de Vaugirard), a short street near the Montparnasse train station, the museum occupies a beautiful newer building. If this is not simply one of the finest museums in the world, it must be the best postal museum.

Entry cost is a modest 4.5 euros, and visitors are whisked in an elevator to the fifth floor, from which they follow an angular, downward spiral through 15 superbly designed galleries to the entry lobby. There are strong emphases on history, art, and philately – beautifully exemplified by everything from postal uniforms to mail coaches to art works depicting postal services to spectacular rarities of philately.

Items range from the highly unusual – examples of the boules de Moulins – the mostly ill-fated zinc balls, which were used to try to send mail via the Seine into besieged Paris in 1870. Printing plates, including examples with tête-bêche clichés, are shown as are both 19th century and modern printing techniques.

There is even a life-size mock-up of a booth from the open-air bourse and an interactive computer game, in which the player guesses the identities of countries issuing stamps shown. In all, there is much to delight the senses and enlighten the mind.

Adjacent to the entry lobby, there is a boutique, which a modest assortment of reference books, current catalogs, ephemera, and a wonderful assortment of picture postcards depicting rare items of postal history. But there is much more than this to the museum. An extensive research library and archives are located in floors above the public part of the museum. For more information visit its web site.

Paris is indeed rich in philatelic interest – a worthy place of pilgrimage for all FCPS members!