Dear friends, the saying that is the title of this short dissertation of mine is usually used in a "negative" sense. However, are we really sure that, sometimes, this saying cannot hide a positive meaning?
Applying it to philately, I can say with certainty that some "innkeepers" praise their wine with good reason. I'll explain.
Professional philately with a capital “P” is based above all on three factors:
1) Expertise on the subject.
2) Availability of a large and widespread stock.
3) Contacts with suppliers of the utmost seriousness and equal competence.
To this we must obviously add an ability to understand the needs of the individual collector and, when possible, satisfy them even at the cost of small sacrifices.
Let us therefore analyze the three "Musts" of the professional philatelist.
1) Competence.
It includes detailed knowledge of the material covered, both in the case of proposals to a client and in the case of examination for an appraisal and implies the ability (not a given, indeed!) to argue and explain the objects offered or examined in a clear and linear way .
The customer must always know what he is buying, the difference between the different philatelic sectors and the different qualities and types, the availability of that material on the market, and so on.
The good professional must therefore be competent in his specific subject, but he becomes a 360 degree operator only if he is capable of transmitting that knowledge, to the necessary extent, to the collector and customer who will have the opportunity to grow thanks to his advice.
On the other hand, the collector / customer must know how to receive this information, process it in the way most suited to his collections, and to do this he must trust in the ability and knowledge of the professional in front of him. Therefore, if on the one hand the operator must know how to present himself, make himself known for what it is worth and make the customer understand the difference between a "good wine" and a "poor wine", the collector must learn to distinguish between "innkeepers" who offer their wine as the best there is (but many times they don't even know the taste) and those who instead offer the best wine and know what they are offering, aware that the most important treasure for them is not the material that they own, but the potential customers who can purchase it.
2) Availability
Certainly a serious operator cannot work without having seen, touched, examined and studied a large quantity of material relating to the area he deals with. It is unthinkable to work by reading the value of an object in a catalog and applying an empirical discount percentage to that value, considering it the limit for purchases and sales and not calibrating it according to the issue considered; a one-size-fits-all cut is a sign of great incompetence.
By way of example, if series or stamps are requested which are essentially unobtainable on the market, one cannot expect to obtain prices similar to those applied for stamps commonly found in any online auction, paper catalogue, philately shop .
Expertise on the specific subject is rare. Those who really know the subject, who are able to estimate the value of a collection in a short time, to understand the types of cancellations, rubbers, perforations and anything else useful to be able to offer a satisfactory service to their customers, are white flies.
The stock material therefore has not only a commercial importance, but also a substantial one for the growth of the operator and for direct knowledge of what is being handled. Having a set of comparisons (sampling) of a certain level even on the most expensive pieces is essential to lay the foundations of your work, if you want to undertake both a commercial and surveying career in this sector. Therefore, having as a reference operator a professional who is known to hold an important and varied stock, which encompasses the entire Italian area without exceptions, is in itself an essential guarantee.
3) Suppliers
A self-respecting commercial operator must have points of reference of excellence; that is, he must know how to seek replenishment of his stocks not only at public auctions, where one can certainly find the best deals if one has sufficient expertise to find them, but also from those who know more than him. As Bud Spencer said in one of his hilarious films, in life there is always someone stronger (in our case: smarter, with more knowledge) than us; and this always applies to everyone.
The choice of the supplier is therefore also fundamental, because it enriches the culture, knowledge and historical memory of the commercial operator, making him the custodian and heir of legacies that cannot be understood from philatelic literature alone, but come from those who experienced them firsthand and he tells his story through stamps.
Here, the fortune of a professional operator is also this, being able to collect the legacy of part of the History of Italian Philately from people who wrote it, developing a knowledge which, increased by the potential already present and by the great passion for the sector in which works, it becomes an asset to be shared and spread.
A fortune that will therefore be available to collectors, customers and other commercial operators, and which will act as a springboard for operations of great importance which will not be exclusively aimed at the mere trade of stamps, but also at the revaluation and relaunch of the sector whole, through the valorisation of its cornerstones and its excellence.
And so, returning to our title, it is true that not all "innkeepers" are the same, but sometimes it can happen that an "innkeeper" promotes his wine as excellent knowing well not only its flavor, but also its genesis, the work that lies behind it, the effort and love with which it was produced.
This is perhaps the case in which the saying is not so negative after all; the collector, the customer, the commercial operator, the enthusiast have the task of knowing how to distinguish good wine from less good wine, truth from lies, knowledge from ignorance and wisdom from presumption.
Because it is true that extricating oneself from the labyrinths of classical and modern philately is difficult, but just as one cannot lump everything together, it is reasonable to think that among the many "innkeepers" who praise good wines, there is someone who knows what he offers , and it is only up to us to know how to distinguish between the many sirens, then finding the courage to offer him our trust and enjoy more serenely and without worries what is our common passion: true Philately.