Coin trader and auctioneer Noble Investments has raised £2.8 million at 185p to expand into stamp trading.

Iranian property tycoon Vincent Tchenguiz and one institutional investor have put up the money in a placing organised by broker Collins Stewart. Ian Goldbart, Noble’s managing director, who says Tchenguiz was willing to take the entire placing, argues that moving into the highly fragmented, £10 billion stamp market is a logical step, which utterly depends on securing the collaboration of the right people.

To this end, Noble’s AH Baldwin subsidiary will be working with two key players, Andrew Claridge and Andrew Lajer. Claridge, head of Grosvenor Philatelic Auctions, is a veteran of Phillips’ stamp side and Swiss group Harmers and a past secretary of the Great Britain Philatelic Society, while Lajer, a former vice president of the same society, spent 17 years at stamp specialist Stanley Gibbons before starting his own business in1993.

With this set-up, Goldbart hopes that money and stamps ‘will come through the door’, with no significant new overheads. A former stockbroker, he sold his own entire coin collection to Noble on the eve of its AIM flotation at 23p in 2003 and has since driven fast growth.

The company, which made £1 million pre-tax in the year to August 2006 on £7.4 million turnover, increased profits more than threefold to a little more than £1 million in the six months to last February on turnover nearly doubled to £5.2 million.

Recommended by Growth Company Investor at 73.5p in 2005 and highlighted last year at 132.5p, Noble shares hit 222.5p last June and have since slipped back to 187p.

They could move forward again if the stamp venture succeeds.

Noble Investments	AIM	£11.67m	74.00p	0.00p
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Other company articles:
Noble Investments			06/11/2008
Noble in £1.25m stamps swoop			21/08/2008
Noble coins it in			01/11/2007
Tchenguiz backs Noble stamp move			20/08/2007
Noble starting to show its true value			03/11/2006