Stanley Gibbons
company which specialises in the retailing of collectable postage stamps and similar products, founded in 1856
The Stanley Gibbons Group plc is a company quoted on the London Stock Exchange specialising in the retailing of collectable postage stamps and similar products. The group is incorporated in London. The company is a major stamp dealer and philatelic publisher. The company's philatelic subsidiary, Stanley Gibbons Limited, had a royal warrant of appointment from Queen Elizabeth II.
History
The company has a long corporate history, having started as a sole trader business owned by Edward Stanley Gibbons in 1856 and now being a quoted company with a number of subsidiaries.
Before 1900
The business started when, employed as an assistant in his father's pharmacy shop in Plymouth, Gibbons set up a counter selling stamps. In 1863 he was fortunate enough to purchase from two sailors a sackful of rare Cape of Good Hope triangular stamps.
In 1874 Gibbons moved to a house near Clapham Common in south London and in 1876 he moved again to Gower Street in Bloomsbury near the British Museum.
By 1890 Stanley Gibbons wished to retire and the business was sold to Charles Phillips for £25,000 (equivalent to £3.5 million in 2024). Phillips became managing director, with Gibbons as chairman.
In 1891 a shop was opened at 435 Strand in addition to the Gower Street premises, and in 1893 the shop and offices were amalgamated at 391 Strand where the company's retail premises remained for many years until they moved to 399 Strand.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Stanley Gibbons” as company which specialises in the retailing of collectable postage stamps and similar products, founded in 1856. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as company which specialises in the retailing of collectable postage stamps and similar products, founded in 1856. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1938876. VIAF identifies the subject as 138909456. The Library of Congress control number is no2003008881. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1856, 1900, 1863 and 1874.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Stanley Gibbons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.