Theodore Champion

Theodore Champion (born the February 14th 1873 with Geneva - died the August 31st 1954 with Oak-Borough) was a merchant of stamps and a racing cyclist Suisse. It settled to the 13 of the Rue Drouot with Paris in 1899. This shop attracted other merchants and concentrated in the district a good portion the philatelic commercial Parisian.

Biography

Theodore Champion was the son of a bank clerk and a mother who collected the postage stamps. His/her Adrien brother and also collect these postal labels to him. They do not hesitate to excavate the dustbins of the paternal bank to recover specimens. It is told that they sold their collection for a large sum to show with their father skeptic the cogency of their company.

All as a practitioner the trade of stamps, it carries out a career of racing cyclist. In 1894, it is thus champion cycle of Switzerland and gains the Grand Prix of Geneva.

It settles with Paris in 1899 with its collection. Employed of the merchant of Forbin stamps, Champion repurchases in 1902 the store of the Rue Drouot. Quickly, it creates a bulletin of innovations where it proposes of exclusiveness the emissions in certain foreign postal administrations.

He manages to impose the collection of the new stamps when the collectors of the beginning of the 20th century collect them obliterated, i.e. having been used well for their postal office.

He quickly becomes the most important Parisian merchant of stamps, and is elected member of the Académie of philately in 1948.

Since 1900 and its meeting with the editor Louis Yvert, it holds up to date the dimensions printed in the catalogs Yvert and Tellier. After its death, Pierre Yvert and the brothers Ladislas and Alexandre Varga repurchase his goodwill to found the Ancienne House Theodore Champion. Varga, then Jean, wire of Ladislas, continue to evaluate the dimensions of the catalog Yvert and Tellier until 2000.

The current company

The company Old House Theodore Champion , Public limit company, still exists and bears its name. It kept its importance, in particular thanks to the exclusiveness in the sale of emissions of foreign countries in France: Scandinavia, insular territories British, etc In 1990, the turnover is of 40 franc million.

It publishes with the philatelic editor Yvert and Tellier a monthly bulletin which reference progressively the emissions of stamps of the whole world, and acted as supplement to the catalogs this editor.

In 1990, the company left 13 rue Drouot, and was distributed in Paris between the street of Hauteville for the head office and the street of the Transport for stock. In June 2003, it takes again a lease street Drouot to install an sales outlet there.

The company is member of the French Chambre of the traders and experts in philately (CNEP).

Homages

Theodore Champion was represented several times on stamps:

the Liechtenstein emitted a stamp with its effigy in 1969;
Antigua emitted a Timbre on stamp in 1993: it is represented beside the French stamp “a frank vermilion with the type Cérès”,
Montserrat in 2002 on a block of four stamps in the honor of Rowland Hill, printer Thomas Of the Street, the editor Edward Stanley Gibbons.

See too

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