He had been ailing but his death still surprised because of his amazing fitness until quite recent times. When new younger players went onto the football field and saw the old fella dribbling a ball towards them they tended to utter:”What on earth is this coming my way?” Their shock was compounded when he zipped past them.
If he was an odd sportsman to encounter on the field he was in many ways not your popular conception of a stamp dealer either. He was highly entrepreneurial and his philately was not of the scholarly kind. His knack was sourcing material and placing it in the right spot. While keeping his eye on the bottom line he was not your introverted accountant type.
Stern was generous with the most important thing we have – time. He had time for everyone and used it in a helpful productive fashion. His career reads as a trifle on the politically incorrect side. This was pragmatism. He was a survivor.
While old bones are not unusual in the stamp industry – another eminent stamp dealer Ken Baker died at 104 only a month ago – he survived/escaped the evil of Auschwitz - but still ended up losing most of his family. His luck was being in the right place at the right time – and the big stakes which paid off at the Casino.
He owed a lot to stamps including possibly his life. Sales of stamps to a German officer helped secure his continued freedom. He has shared the story with the world in his book The Max Factor: My life as a stamp dealer. Which is a good yarn for an industry where men spend much of their time slumped over a table fiddling with the tiny bits of paper with magnifying glasses and tweezers. Sales of stamps to neutral countries from his native Slovakia during the World War II to raise foreign exchange brought him small mercies.
The Russian invasion occurred just in time. In occupied Bratislava he wove his way around the stamp tables that were put up every week in the centre of the city. The city's main attraction nowadays, a Tesco supermarket, was a sad replacement although you could buy lawn mowers there if you wanted to. Stamps in those days were safer than money. They were also being issued with very strange over prints of the kind that stamp dealers today would go wild over.
Stern owes his place in the history of global collectables largely through the stature he earned in the stamp trade as the Australian agent for the post offices of the world from the largest, such as the UK, to small independent territories, some of which relied upon them for economic viability. He was a bulk buyer and distributor persuading big companies to give away postage stamps as promotions. He surprised himself when he discovered the size of the cheques paid out for the stamps given away for the kids at Ampol service stations in the 1960s. He endorsed and managed this program.
He knew where the hoards of stamps were and is said to have sold a container stuffed full of Czechoslovakian stamps to China with which he traded long before Gough Whitlam and Richard Nixon went there.
He saw massive changes in the collectible during his lifetime. Stamp collecting changed from a boyhood passion to an older man's obsession. Gaps were still filled in when retirees returned to their childhood hobby but the action has become focussed on rarities and the pursuit of story telling collections. Thematics have become strong, particularly with women. Stamps are still traded across frontiers but stamps have lost much of their appeal as a source of learning for youth because foreign places can now be reached by travel and through the Internet. His was a near century wrapped up in the evolution and change which kept a lot of people out of trouble...but might be tempting to pocket because of the slightness of the item and the value that cold be wrapped up in it..
Stern pulled off some remarkable deals. He was the first Western dealer to obtain a pitch at the Beijing Stamp Fair. He was a great negotiator, for any buyer who in bad grace to buy might well come back the next morning to clinch a deal, could find the price had gone up. He was a very hard worker and ruthless with competitors who sought to slash prices for them and the catalogues. (He slashed them more.)
He greatly regretted not buying a shop in the Port Phillip Arcade where his company now occupies eight shops. But stock came first. His death has been judged as the end of an era and coincidentally big plans are underway to develop the arcade as part of the city's rejuvenation.
His establishment helped expedite the big flow of funds into the hobby in Australia by the sale of stamps as a way of coping with the anxieties of stagflafion that was endemic in the 1970s. The lack of investment opportunities accompanied by a desire to place funds in real assets which might appreciate gave stamps one of their most sustained periods of growth ever in Australia.
Stern provided career development opportunities to several other traders, such as coin and medal man Tony Shields and taking on keen numismatist Ray Jewell, a friend of Melbourne art dealer Dana Rogowski and a buyer of traditional pictures in the 1970s. A powerful numismatic arm was established with top end medals also traded. However, Stern saluted coins over stamps as portable heritage because of the relative ages each had been in circulation.
Max had a long lasting happy marriage to Elva, establishing a family in post war Europe. She helped out in the business from their early days, putting stamps into cellophane packets and more. His family spanned four generations and for a whole year when she was in hospital he took his work in there and stayed from dawn to dusk. He is survived by two daughters, Judy and Ruth while the business is now being run by his son-in-law Sam Siegel.
He made many visits to Europe having a love of Vienna from his earliest years. It is only one hour's drive from Bratislava. These were increasingly made as much for his holocaust lectures as for stock or trade deals, as he came to terms with the tragedy.
