Background and History of the Business

Stuart Baldwin has been a book collector since 1936 after receiving the first Rupert Annual as a Christmas present, and has a professional background in Electrical Engineering (A five year apprenticeship with Crompton Parkinson's of Chelmsford); two years National Service; ten years in Pharmacy - Bristol Royal Infirmary, Retail and as a medical representative with Burroughs Wellcome & Co; 17 years with IBM Marketing Computers, over two years with the London Enterprise Agency as Small Firms Adviser; and occasional University Lecturing on Small Business start-ups for many years.

His main hobby of fossil collecting led to the start of a small spare-time business manufacturing fossil replicas for education and museums in 1969. To help finance this he sold part of his own library thereby gaining an insight into secondhand bookdealing. Whole-time working for both business with his wife Pam started in 1981 and progressed rapidly leading to the addition of a Museum of Palaeontology & Zoology and a Gift Shop. Over a 25 year period about a million replicas were produced and supplied to Schools, Universities and Museums throughout the world. In 1995 the fossil replica business and museum contents were sold to the Open University as a going concern and the Gift Shop closed. For current details of fossil replicas please click on Links. Some 1700 feet of shelving were subsequently added and the book stock greatly enlarged.

Though no longer needing to work and well past his "sell by date" Stuart runs his business as a hobby, as a service to Geology and Palaeontology, and as a means of financing his own book collecting.

He is a life member of The Geological Society of London, The Linnean Society, The Geologists' Association (A former Treasurer), the Royal Institution, the Yorkshire Geological Society, The Croydon Natural History and Scientific Society Ltd., The Essex Naturalists' Trust, and The Museums Association. He is a member of the Society for the History of Natural History, the British Society for the History of Science, The Geological Curators' Group, The Ray Society, The Palaeontological Association, The Palaeontographical Society, The History of Earth Sciences Society and the History of Geology Group of the Geological Society. These memberships, and his personal car number plate: FOS5IL give an indication of some of his main interests.

He has written (or co-authored) and published five books to date e.g. Dinosaur Stamps of the World with Bev Halstead, and has several more in preparation including a bibliography of Charles Lyell. He started an Open University science degree in 1971 (the year the OU started courses) and obtained his BSc in 1998, having set a record as the Open University's slowest student to date, having taken 28 years and become a Guiness World Record Holder in the process. His latest book: A Beginners Guide to Secondhand Bookdealing was published in September 1999, and has now almost sold out.

He has been operating from home since 2002 and visitors are always welcome (By appointment) to view the large stock.  Though only working part-time now, his personal interests include golf, beekeeping, the local Wine and Probus Clubs and lecturing in aid of Cancer Research UK.