David M. Kols
September 13, 1950 – March 13, 2018
Saint Louis, Missouri
David Michael Kols graduated from Lehigh University – Class of 1972, where he majored in Economics, and was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. After college, David moved to New York City where he started a wholesale travel company in the Bronx, later moving it to Connecticut.
In 1984, Kols established Mississippi Computer Corp. to provide software to the wholesale travel industry.
In 1990, he opened Regency Stamps, a philatelic retail store and auction house located in Warson Woods, moving the company to Le Chateau Village in Frontenac, and finally expanding to the Central West End in St. Louis.
In 1992 he bought Superior Galleries of Beverly Hills, CA incorporating many other collectibles forming Regency-Superior Auctions. David was a true entrepreneur.
A stamp collector since childhood, he revamped his business eight years later as Regency Stamps Ltd. and opened a street-level retail stamp store in the St. Louis area. The shop remained open for a quarter century and included a United States Postal Service substation and philatelic window.
Working with hobby leaders in the St. Louis area, Kols and his wife Penney, founded and supported the St. Louis Stamp Expo (EXPO), which held its first show Oct. 1-3, 1993. Expo quickly earned accreditation as an APS World Series of Philately show and has maintained that status for well over two decades. With Kols as executive director, the show was the first major stamp exhibition in the St. Louis area in nearly 20 years. It made a significant effort to engage youngsters in the first year by bringing in more than 900 schoolchildren in a single day and providing activities and gifts for them.
For 2002-2005, Kols authored the Stamp Market Tips column for Linn’s Stamp News.
In 2016, Kols was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer requiring him to shut down his businesses and step down as the Executive Director of the St. Louis Stamp Expo.
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