Collectibles Insurance Services was founded in 1966 by Horace Harrison, a celebrated stamp collector and active member of the American Philatelic Society. Harrison saw that conventional insurance companies couldn’t fully serve the needs of stamp collectors like him. So he created an agency that could: Harrison & Associates. In 1983, he sold the agency to his fellow collector and friend, Dan Walker, who expanded the agency’s coverage. Eventually, the agency name was changed to Collectibles Insurance Services.
Dan has been working since the third grade when he and his classmate started a stamp company called the JimDandy Stamp Company. After his classmate’s father helped them legally register the company, the boys started advertising in The New York Times while selling stamps to their schoolmates.
Years later, Dan, a former Wall Street securities analyst, exhibited at his first stamp show. It was at this show in 1979 that Dan met Patricia Stilwell, a veteran postal history exhibitor who would soon become Dan’s wife. You could say the couple were stamp fanatics. The stamp lovers’ wedding cake was decorated with Grenadian and Irish postmarks from both of their collections. And to send them off on their honeymoon, their wedding guests tossed used stamp hinges instead of rice!
Dan’s collections have covered British Borneo, Romania, and the Civil War era U.S. Revenue stamps. He is best known for his research and published work on the West Indian island of Grenada. A winner of the American Philatelic Society’s Champion of Champions Award, Dan soon became actively engaged in the collection and study of the Feudatory States of India, including multi-frame exhibits of Barwani and Soruth. In 2014, Dan was elected to the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists, an honor conferred on just 369 philatelists in the world since the Roll was established more than 90 years ago.
For the past 34 years, Dan has played a huge part in making Collectibles Insurance Services what it is today. A few weeks ago, Dan announced he would be retiring. Dan has whittled down his stamp collecting to two major collecting areas and has been accumulating and storing his material. Dan is looking forward to getting his material sorted and studied. He even purchased a relational database program that will help him organize his thousands of stamps.
While we are sad to see Dan retire, we know the future of Collectibles Insurance Services will stay true to the values and traditions set forth by Dan more than 30 years ago. Dan, we thank you and wish you nothing but the best in your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
The Collectibles Insurance Services Team