About
Meet the owner of Swan Classic, LLC, C. (Cass) S. Rejent.
Affiliations
- Cobb County Stamp Club member since 2003. After serving as Secretary, Treasurer, I’ve served as President for the last ten years.
- Treasurer of the Southeast Federation of Stamp Clubs, Inc. that annually sponsors the Southeastern Stamp Expo.
- Treasurer of the Boston 2026 World Stamp Show, Inc. which will sponsor the Boston 2026 World Expo (ten-year event).
- Swan Classic, LLC is a proud member of the American Stamp Dealers Association, the National Stamp Dealers Association and a dealer member of the American Philatelic Society.
My Story
It all started with baseball cards when I was about ten years old. Success was defined as having a card for each player on your team (in this case, the Detroit Tigers). One also needed to keep a key eye out for better player’s cards and rookie cards. I could trade cards with my friends, but I always wanted to have the best possible card condition (without folds, tears, scrapes, holes and great centering).
Introducing Stamp Collecting
One Christmas, upon visiting my Aunt, she stated that “baseball cards are for children, adults collect postage stamps”, and she presented me with an envelope full of unsorted Washington-Franklin and 1920’s US regular issues. At this point, I had no instruction on how to sort, collect or store such stamps. The stamps had some similar images, different denominations and different colors; however, there appeared to be a number of duplicates. They quickly went back into the envelope. But, from then on, I was a stamp accumulator/collector, and would cut off all the stamps we received through the mail at our house.
The next Christmas, I was presented with a Minkus US stamp catalogue, a paper perforation gauge and a small magnifying glass. This made things much easier to organize. I was intrigued by the aspect of having a single face stamp with a number of different varieties due to different printings. These varieties included:
- Color
- Perforations
- Paper type
- Watermarks
- Secret marks
Some varieties had a much higher catalogue value than other, more common ones, so there was always a search for the more valuable items. I was surprised to discover that my baseball card friends also collected stamps. My friends and I were lucky to have a stamp store within walking distance of our homes, and our group of “newbies” visited this location.
The Stamp Store
The proprietor was a grandfatherly like person who had a number of stamp books, whereby, we could pick stamps for a penny or a nickel each. Our group was enthralled and spent hours adding to our collections. The best part was, that if we came upon a stamp we could not identify (mostly non-US), the proprietor was eager to show us how to look up the stamp in the Scott catalogue (at that time, it was two volumes). For me, this literally opened up a whole new world of stamp collecting. I got really good at this process.
The proprietor was also heavily involved in acquiring all the worldwide stamps issued in the anti-malaria campaign sponsored by the United Nations. Upon reading the latest copy of Linn’s Stamp News, he would send correspondence (and checks) to the stamp issuing country or agent, and was thrilled when such anti-malaria stamps and/or souvenir sheets arrived.
At his suggestion, I purchased a Scott National album for my US stamps. Now I had a place to keep my collection. The proprietor sort of took me under his wing, and showed me how deal with customers, how to display stamps for sale and how to bid at (mail bid) auctions. For my assistance at his store that summer, he presented me with a full set (M-NH) of the US Famous Americans.
Rediscovering Postage Stamps
We moved to a different suburb, I changed schools (away from my old friends), and my stamp collection was stored in a box at our new home’s basement. Then came high school, summer jobs (caddying and then working for stock brokerage firms in downtown Detroit), college and my first job in Atlanta, Georgia at a “big-eight” accounting firm.
In 1985, I obtained a copy of Linn’s Stamp News. Upon reading this publication, I would say that the collecting spark was reignited. After over twenty years, I reopened my US collection and began adding missing stamps. It was like I had never stopped. I joined the American Philatelic Society and received a number of tips on how to grow in knowledge. At the point where the next US stamp that I needed would cost $100+, I again took a breather, and packaged up the collection for hibernation.
The collecting spark was ignited again upon my winning bid of a set of Scott Blue worldwide classic albums. I then began purchasing classic era country collections to add to my Scott Blue albums. However, I found a number of problems with this album in that it had spaces for only short sets, (not full sets) and missed a number of spaces for stamps that I had collected. I contacted Mr. Goldberg of Subway Stamps and he suggested a full set of Scott Brown reproduction pages (and binders). These have been great for my classic era worldwide stamps. However, I continue to add additional pages for varieties added since these pages were originally designed and published in the 1940’s, over eighty years ago.
Swan Classic, LLC
In 2003, I organized my stamp firm, Swan Classic, LLC, to sell classic era postage stamps and provide information to beginner and intermediate collectors. The name is derived from the image on the first classic era stamp that I collected, a Black Swan, from Western Australia. Now retired (CPA emeritus), I can devote more time to my hobby.
How can I assist you?