Ryohei Ishikawa (born July 1927) is a Japanese banker, the former chairman of Chubu Bank and the Teisan Group. He is a philatelist specialising in the stamps and postal history of the United States, Hawaii, and Hong Kong.
Ryohei Ishikawa | |
---|---|
Born | July 1927 |
Nationality | Japanese |
Occupation | Banker |
Known for | Collection of U.S. postage stamps |
Board member of | Chubu Bank, Teisan Group |
Ryohei Ishikawa was born in July 1927.[1]
Ishikawa is a banker and the former chairman of Chubu Bank and the Teisan Group.[2]
Ishikawa was briefly a stamp collector as a child. His interest was rekindled in 1970 when his mother gave him some old albums she had found in the family home. He decided to specialise in United States stamps after reading Stanley B. Ashbrook's The United States One Cent Stamp of 1851-1857 (1938) and subsequently formed a leading collection of that issue, moving on to other classic U.S. stamps.[4]
In addition, Ishikawa has formed leading and award-winning collections of the stamps and postal history of Hawaii, Hong Kong, and foreign post offices in Japan. His U.S. collection included all the stamps issued from 1847 to 1869[2] as well as items such as the unique block of four of the 1869 24c stamps of the United States with an inverted center that had once been in the collection of William Thorne.[5][6] The collection was sold for $9.5 million at Christie's, New York, in 1993.[2][7]