Hungaria Stamp Exchange (HSE) began in Hungary in the 1940's by Béla “Bill” Bauer. The company was started not even as a business, but a trade with friends. Béla kept a very close relationship with this small circle of friends. When Béla and his wife, Rita, emigrated to the United States during World War II, he put the business on hold until they got settled. He then restarted the business in the 1950's with a small core group of customers. He serviced these customers until he passed it on to his son (Alan) in 1982. The company served the same small group of customers and friends until 2004, when Alan created a web presence for the company, with the assistance of his son, Andrew. The website www.hungarianstamps.com was born. Following that the business expanded exponentially, with Alan and Diane running the business on a full-time basis. Creating the HSE store with inventories of stamps of all of the Eastern European countries allowed the business to expand internationally and process orders for customers in any country, 24 hours a day. Today we have over 1000 active customers on all continents. Throughout this growth, we have continued to maintain the highest level of customer service to our loyal customers throughout the world.
When our philatelic customers collecting interested shift, so does HSE to support their collecting needs. Moving from primarily Hungary philatelic issues, we now offer stamps from Central and Eastern European Countries including the Balkan and Baltic Countries, Russia and former Russian Federation and Western Asia. When collectors reached out about thematic stamp offerings from Eastern Europe, we organized our online store collections by popular themes. As collectors needed assistance obtaining hard to find stamps, we have worked diligently to seek out sources of these issues, enabling Alan to call on relationships with Eastern European philatelic vendors so he could act as a buyer’s agent on behalf of selected customers. When some of our HSE customers reached a point in their philatelic journey when they needed assistance in the evaluation and disposition of their collection, Alan moved into stamp appraisals and seller’s agent role, becoming a Qualified Philatelic Appraiser listed with the ASDA (Association of Stamp Dealers of America).
