Walking into CS Philatelic Agency feels less like stepping into a store and more like slipping back in time. On the wall nearest the door, stamps hang in clear plastic sleeves sorted by country, some of which no longer exist: East Germany, Yugoslavia, the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), for example. Postcards from the 1970s and 80s fill the corners. A chest of drawers overflows with first-day covers – envelopes bearing stamps that were postmarked on their first day of release. Some date back to the 1950s.Over at the counter, store owner Tan Chun Lim was deep in conversation with a collector hailing from Brunei. A chuckle here, a couple of taps on the calculator there and soon S$600 (US$469) and several omnibuses of stamps changed hands. "Omnibus" is the term collectors use to refer to folders containing a full set of stamps.As the happy customer left with his prizes, Mr Tan, 81, crossed the shop in casual dress, including socks and Birkenstocks, and welcomed me properly into his little domain at Peninsula Shopping Complex. Leading me to a corner of the 46sqm unit, he showed me what he had just bought himself earlier that afternoon: several volumes of yellowed stamp albums, cleared out of someone's grandparents' flat.