To our customers, clients, and friends,

It was thirty years ago – September 1989 – that an idea dawned on us. Steven had been collecting autographs for years, really had a passion for it, and thought it would be rewarding to get into the field in a small way. This would enable us to find more interesting items for our collection, and reach out to more potential sellers. We funded the new enterprise with less than $5,000, and bought a Hancock document, a Jefferson free frank, and an Einstein letter to augment those pieces of our collection that were earmarked for sale. Steven prepared Catalog No. 1 in our basement, copying illustrations and taping them onto pages to be Xeroxed. You can see one such catalog with his notations in the coming pages. It mailed in March 1990, and though the results were hardly buoying, with Susan’s encouragement, we gave Catalog No. 2 a try. We placed ads in autograph publications, exhibited at shows, and met many customers. And the rest is history.

When Steven started the business it was small. Susan saw no reason it would not stay, in effect, a hobby. Susan had her own career at the time, and Steven had his law practice. By 1993 we could not help noticing that the autograph business was taking off. One night we huddled around the table and had a shared vision of what the business could be if we devoted the time and resources. We decided to go all in. Steven could not do it all by himself, so Susan came on board and we ran Steven S. Raab Autographs together from that day on.

Susan was – and is – a visionary. Now she was in with Steven running the business full time, and Neale Lanigan, who had worked with famed dealer Mabel Zahn, became our mentor and friend, helping us learn the business. We hired him and he worked for us for years. By 1998, the business had grown to the point where Steven closed his law office and devoted all his time to Steven S. Raab Autographs. In an early watershed moment, we acquired a collection of hundreds of Ronald Reagan letters to his pen pal Lorraine Wagner, still the most important archive of Reagan letters to reach the market. This acquisition allowed us to see the grand scope of the possibilities.

Back then, we did it all ourselves. Susan built and designed the catalogs, and illustrated every piece, something which no one else did at the time. In 1995, we oversaw our transition to online business, the first in our field, and then a year later created an online searchable database, another innovation. We were trailblazers and it was fun. Over the years we proudly innovated within the industry and we see our legacy all around us. The general philosophy in the field at the time was that you buy whatever you think will make you money. Susan, however, was intent on concentrating on the best pieces: to focus on quality and not quantity. This philosophy became the controlling ethos of the Raab Collection. And now the small enterprise we started thirty years ago is in its second generation, a pleasure for us that would be hard to describe.

We feel we have built something great. And we know we owe that to you – our wonderful loyal customers going all the way back to Catalog No. 1 – and the new ones we are welcoming on board today with Catalog No. 81. We would like to thank you all for having helped make this possible. We even have a few people who have been with us since the very start; a special hat tip to them.

Susan & Steven Raab

Our documents are well traveled. Take a look below to see a very small number of the places around the world where our discoveries have been acquired or exhibited.

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