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The Wild Side
Noted philatelic author Stephen R. Datz takes readers on an eye-opening journey into the side of stamp collecting and dealing that most have never hear about. Datz chronicles his first-hand encounters with philatelic con-men, crooks, and scammers. Meet a rogues gallery of shadowy characters, eccentrics and even murderers—all real people inhabiting the dark underside of philately. Absolutely spellbinding—you will not want to put the book down! The second in Datz’s trilogy about the stamp business.
- GenresTrue Crime
166 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1990
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April 22, 2013
I'm much more partial to crime fiction than fact, but, having trained as a criminologist (many years ago when fingerprint comparison was a manual process), an interest in forensics and skulduggery remains. And I also have a keen interest in stamp collecting. That double-pronged curiosity makes Stephen Datz's The Wild Side a must-read for me. The book recounts his brushes with illegality and eccentricities and is divided into three sections -- Murder & Major Crime, Mischief & Intrigue, and Memorable Characters.
Since Datz is a Colorado-based stamp dealer and all the stories in the book are based on his own experiences, they all occur in Colorado locales such as Boulder or Aurora. While Colorado is not Montana or South Dakota, it's also not Florida or California; and Boulder is not Chicago or New York --it's not even Santa Monica -- so most of the crimes are small ball, even the two murders, and the remainder of the crimes tend to be desperate people trying to turn chump change into a bonanza. Still, Datz's accounts are well written, are often heart-felt, and leave no doubt as to the veracity of the tales, a trait often missing from other true-crime tomes. Even the pedestrian crimes are made interesting by Datz's personal immersion into the action, his deft touches of characterization.
Counterfeiters, thieves, grifters -- I've had limited contact with those types, so I was able to enjoy the first two sections of the book as a bystander watching events unfold, interested but not involved. In the last section, however, "Memorable Characters," almost all were very recognizable to me -- the chap who tries to build a great stamp collection without spending any money, the collector who will spend money on junk knowing that one day it will be worth a million dollars, and the fellow who thinks he has the world's rarest stamp. And then there is the royal-in-hiding, forced to sell his collection of letters and cards from the crowned heads of Europe...because he needs the money. It's a touching and poignant story, and probably the best in the book.
Datz writes with a common touch, able to make the sometimes arcane field of philately understandable to the lay person, and so while you might get a bit more out of this book if you are indeed a stamp collector (probably his target audience), a non-collector would still enjoy the book, probably even someone who, in this age of email, only has a vague notion of what a postage stamp is.
Since Datz is a Colorado-based stamp dealer and all the stories in the book are based on his own experiences, they all occur in Colorado locales such as Boulder or Aurora. While Colorado is not Montana or South Dakota, it's also not Florida or California; and Boulder is not Chicago or New York --it's not even Santa Monica -- so most of the crimes are small ball, even the two murders, and the remainder of the crimes tend to be desperate people trying to turn chump change into a bonanza. Still, Datz's accounts are well written, are often heart-felt, and leave no doubt as to the veracity of the tales, a trait often missing from other true-crime tomes. Even the pedestrian crimes are made interesting by Datz's personal immersion into the action, his deft touches of characterization.
Counterfeiters, thieves, grifters -- I've had limited contact with those types, so I was able to enjoy the first two sections of the book as a bystander watching events unfold, interested but not involved. In the last section, however, "Memorable Characters," almost all were very recognizable to me -- the chap who tries to build a great stamp collection without spending any money, the collector who will spend money on junk knowing that one day it will be worth a million dollars, and the fellow who thinks he has the world's rarest stamp. And then there is the royal-in-hiding, forced to sell his collection of letters and cards from the crowned heads of Europe...because he needs the money. It's a touching and poignant story, and probably the best in the book.
Datz writes with a common touch, able to make the sometimes arcane field of philately understandable to the lay person, and so while you might get a bit more out of this book if you are indeed a stamp collector (probably his target audience), a non-collector would still enjoy the book, probably even someone who, in this age of email, only has a vague notion of what a postage stamp is.
Displaying 1 of 1 review