Armand Rousso in the Financial World Magazine

 A 35-year-old Frenchman whose deal-making has elevated the humdrum notion of stamp trading to rarefied heights, is again about to redefine the stamp market.

Rousso, from his base in Palm Beach, began to swap in 1983 for choice real estate, yachts and private jets are of uncommon vintage. And now his is readying the world’s first international stamp exchange for a late August opening in Miami. Patterned after the stock exchanges, Rousso’s International Stamp Exchange Corp. will provide up-to-the-second bid and ask prices to United States and European dealers on every stamp listed in the industry-standard Scott Catalogue. Linking the dealers to the exchange and one another will be a host computer, which collectors and investors can tap themselves from their home computers.

So far, the stamp industry’s response has elated Rousso. He has already lined up 200 dealers in the United States alone and 300 worldwide, and the total could reach 500. He is also encouraged by the feelers he has sent out to Wall Street. A top securities house or two has voiced interest in his exchange, he says, and in July the Securities and Exchange Commission cleared the way for brokerages to plug into the computer network. Moreover, Rousso expects the SEC to approve stamps as commodity investments by September.

Rousso’s fame in the business springs from his swaps of stamps for, among other high-ticket trinkets-which he ten typically sells to buy more stamps-a $6 million mansion in Coral Gables and a $2 million yacht. Last year, the catalogue value of his stamp-for-property deals totaled $45 million, and he is negotiating for items worth perhaps $500 million. The explanation? Rousso’s ability to capitalize on the undervalued European stamp market, which he scours for bargain rarities that he can exchange for more valuable properties because of the stamps’ higher value in the United States.