Scott L. Tilson | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 11, 1963 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Known for | Poetry.com, Stamp Collection, [1] Entrepreneurship |
Scott Tilson (born May 11, 1963) is an American businessman who owned poetry.com [2] and is the founder of "The International Collectors Society". [3] He is also the co-owner of "Psychedelic Art Exchange". [4]
Tilson started his business career at the age of 15, buying and selling rare United States coins under the name "Scott Tilson Rare Coins" while at the same time pursuing his graduation at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. [5]
In 1992, Tilson, along with his new business partner Jeffrey Franz, launched "The International Collectors Society" (ICS). [3] [6] The ICS operated by mass-market advertising, pushing its products via supermarket tabloids and magazines rather than the specialist hobby media used by most stamp dealerships. [5] Initially, the company was formed with the idea of distributing Elvis Presley memorabilia, but when this endeavour failed to take off Franz and Tilson returned to postage stamps. [5] ICS was sued by The Beatles in 1996 for distributing copyright-infringing stamps from Chad, Madagascar, Tanzania and Abkhazia. [7]
In June 1997, Tilson, along with Franz, purchased Poetry.com from Cendant Corporation. The company grew to over 2,000,000 paying members and they held conventions 3 times per year, each of which was attended by over 2500 poets. The company was sold in 2005 in a $9 million transaction to New Catalyst Fund. New Catalyst Fund sold the business to Lulu.com on March 7, 2009. [2] On April 14, 2011, LuLu.com announced that they would close Poetry.com on May 4, 2011. On May 11, 2011, Tilson re-purchased Poetry.com from Lulu.com for ten dollars. Poetry.com shut down again in April 2018.
Tilson received his schooling from The Park School in Brooklandville, Maryland in 1981 and graduated from Northwestern University in 1985 with a B.A. in economics.
Tilson moved with his family to Park City, Utah in June 2005. He has been married to his wife Suzanne since 1990. [8] They have three children, Kyle (born 1994) and Brooke and Grant (born 1997).
Coin collecting is the collecting of coins or other forms of minted legal tender. Coins of interest to collectors include beautiful, rare, and historically significant pieces. Collectors may be interested, for example, in complete sets of a particular design or denomination, coins that were in circulation for only a brief time, or coins with errors. Coin collecting can be differentiated from numismatics, in that the latter is the systematic study of currency as a whole, though the two disciplines are closely interlinked.
Philately is the study of postage stamps and postal history. It also refers to the collection and appreciation of stamps and other philatelic products. While closely associated with stamp collecting and the study of postage, it is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps. For instance, the stamps being studied may be very rare or reside only in museums.
Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects. It is an area of philately, which is the study of stamps. It has been one of the world's most popular hobbies since the late nineteenth century with the rapid growth of the postal service, as a stream of new stamps was produced by countries that sought to advertise their distinctiveness through their stamps.
Philatelic investment is investment in collectible postage stamps for the purpose of realizing a profit. Philatelic investment was popular during the 1970s but then fell out of favour following a speculative bubble and prices of rare stamps took many years to recover.
Scripophily is the study and collection of stock and bond certificates. A specialized field of numismatics, scripophily has developed as an area of collecting because of the inherent beauty of certain historical certificates, and because of interest in the historical context of many of the documents. In addition, some stock certificates serve as excellent examples of engraving. Occasionally, an old stock certificate is found that still has value, representing actual shares in the original or a successor company.
Notgeld is money issued by an institution in a time of economic or political crisis. The issuing institution is usually one without official sanction from the central government. This usually occurs when not enough state-produced money is available from the central bank. In particular, notgeld generally refers to money produced in Germany and Austria during World War I and the Interwar period. Issuing institutions could be a town's savings banks, municipalities and private or state-owned firms. Nearly all issues contained an expiry date, after which time they were invalid. Issues without dates ordinarily had an expiry announced in a newspaper or at the place of issuance.
S&H Green Stamps was a line of trading stamps popular in the United States from 1896 until the late 1980s. They were distributed as part of a rewards program operated by the Sperry & Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson. During the 1960s, the company issued more stamps than the U.S. Postal Service, and distributed 35 million catalogs a year. Customers received stamps at the checkout counters of supermarkets, department stores, and gasoline stations among other retailers, which could then be redeemed for products from the catalog. Top Value Stamps ceased operations in the early 1980s, after which S&H would accept savings books for those left with unredeemed Top Value books, before S&H itself also ceased business.
A key date is a term used in coin collecting and it refers to a date of a given coin series or coin set that is harder to obtain than other dates in the series. A key date coin is usually one with a lower mintage total and it is more valuable than others in the series. Many coin collectors collect coins to fill out a complete set of a series.
Stuart A. Weitzman is an American shoe designer, philatelist, and founder of the shoe company Stuart Weitzman. Weitzman has designed footwear for Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.
Poetry.com is a domain name that has historically been used for poetry-sharing in various forms.

Whitman Publishing is an American book publishing company which started as a subsidiary of the Western Printing & Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. In about 1915, Western began printing and binding a line of juvenile books for the Hamming-Whitman Publishing Company of Chicago. A few years later Hamming-Whitman went bankrupt, and Western took over the company, found success in selling the inventory of low-cost juvenile books, and formed the Whitman Publishing Company.

Coin World is an American numismatic magazine, with weekly and monthly issues. It is among the world’s most popular non-academic publications for coin collectors and is covering the entire numismatic field, including coins, paper money, medals and tokens.
Littleton Coin Company is an employee-owned privately held major American mail order and retail company focused on numismatic (currency) collectibles and based in Littleton, New Hampshire. The company focuses largely on U.S. coins and world coins, as well as a variety of paper money and ancient coins. Largely focused on direct mail, Littleton publishes catalogs several times yearly and has a "coins-on-approval" program.
LuLu Group International is an Emirati-based multinational conglomerate company that operates a chain of hypermarkets and retail companies, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It was founded in 2000 by M. A. Yusuff Ali from Nattika in Kerala, India. The Group mainly operates "Lulu Hypermarket", a chain of hypermarkets that ranks among the top grocers in many of the markets it operates in. LuLu has over 65,000 employees of various nationalities.
Yusuff Ali Musaliam Veettil Abdul Kader, popularly known as M. A. Yusuff Ali, is an Indian businessman and billionaire. He is the chairman and managing director of LuLu Group International, which owns the LuLu Hypermarket chain worldwide and LuLu International Shopping Mall. With an annual turnover of US$8.4 billion, LuLu Group International employs the largest number of Indian diaspora. According to Forbes Middle East, Yusuff Ali was ranked No. 1 in Top 100 Indian business owners in the Arab World 2018. As per Forbes billionaires list published in October 2023, he was ranked 27th richest Indian with net worth of US$6.9 billion.

Praful Thakkar is an Indian collector of autographs, philately, First Day Covers (FDCs), coins, medals, tokens, badges, badge plates and other collectibles from India. He has written several books on his hobbies.
In marketing, premiums are promotional items — toys, collectables, souvenirs and household products — that are linked to a product, and often require proofs of purchase such as box tops or tokens to acquire. The consumer generally has to pay at least the shipping and handling costs to receive the premium. Premiums are sometimes referred to as prizes, although historically the word "prize" has been used to denote an item that is packaged with the product and requires no additional payment over the cost of the product.
Collectors Universe Inc. is an American company formed in 1986, now based in Santa Ana, California, which provides third-party authentication and grading services to collectors, retail buyers and sellers of collectibles. Its authentication services focus on coins, trading cards, sports memorabilia, and autographs. The company reached the combined total of 75 million certified collectibles in 2019. Collectors Universe is also a publisher in fields relating to collecting.
Glen Trosch is an American businessman considered an expert in the field of popular culture collectibles and memorabilia. His primary areas of expertise are toys of the 1960s and 1970s, underground comix and vintage rock concert posters. Trosch is the owner of Psychedelic Art Exchange, the world's leading dealer in museum quality vintage 1960s concert posters.
A collectible market index is a tool used by collectors and investors to track values of collectibles against collectors market from a specific date, calculated in form of Index. It measures the value of a section of the collectors market.