Downeast Stamps is a sole proprietorship owned and operated by Gilbert M. Roderick with premises at 52 Fern Street, Bangor, Maine, USA. Originally established in 1969 as an approval service, Downeast gradually evolved through dealing at bourses and finally into a public auction house in 1975. Gil has been a member of APS since 1974, and is a licensed Maine auctioneer (no. AR675).

Growing up in Rumford, Maine, a town well known for its long snowy winters and world class skiers, Gil picked two appropriate pastimes as a child: stamp collecting and cross country skiing. He collected his first stamp at age 10, won his first ski race as a high school freshman at age 13, and is still a competitive skier, despite two stainless steel replacements for his arthritic knees.

Gil started in the stamp business part-time when he was living in Massachusetts and working for Massachusetts Mutual Insurance Company. In 1969 he returned to Maine as manager of the Bald Mountain Ski Area. When the ski area closed, a victim of the variable coastal climate and a sluggish economy, he turned his part-time avocation into a full-time business.

Since then, Downeast Stamps has held more than 250 auctions over the course of a quarter century. The first catalog was 8 pages, typed by hand, run off on a mimeograph machine, and mailed in hand-addressed business envelopes for 30 cents. Times have changed. The catalog for May, 2009, comprised over 2,500 lots on 141 pages of text with an additional 67-page spread of images, and cost $2.53 to mail. It was set up on a 1.8 gigahertz desktop computer which also generated the corresponding on-line catalog with full color images for the worldwide web.

We've come a long way. We owe it to you, our consigners and our collectors.
Thanks.