A DISGRACED stamp dealer conned his fellow philatelists out of thousands of pounds in a bid to rescue his flagging business, a court heard.

Colin Pye, 43, promised clients he could sell their collections on eBay and wrote them post-dated cheques - but a crash in the notoriously unpredictable stamp-dealing market meant the stock would not shift.

Pye was given 120 hours of unpaid work after his barrister George Threlfall told a judge: "His name is mud in the stamp world now - you trade on trust in that business."

Prosecutor David Chidgey told Gloucester Crown Court that Pye arranged with friend and associate Martin White to sell four boxes of Great Britain and Commonwealth stamps on his behalf.

Pye, of Fountain Crescent, Wotton-under-Edge, gave him two cheques, one for £2,205 and one for £1,800. But each of them bounced, because Pye was not making any money.

Another collector, Graham Chard, was given a bad post-dated cheque for £500 in payment for a Queen Victoria stockbook he planned to sell as an Ebay-based trader.

But again Pye's efforts to shift the goods came to nothing as the market tumbled and the cheque bounced again.

Another fellow dealer Michael Laughton simply had his stamps taken from him and was never paid anything.

George Threlfall, mitigating, said: "As a sole trader he was trying to save a business that was failing. He was very emotionally attached to that business, and had been a stamp collector since he was 11.

"For three years it was about £30,000 in profit - but the difficulty about the stamp trade is that valuation changes from year to year. Stamps go in and out of fashion.

"You can been left holding a lot of stamps you bought in 2002 that you cannot sell in 2005. When the deals didn't come off his cheques bounced.

"Mr Pye is now earning £200 a week as a driver. His name is mud in the stamp world now - you trade on trust in that business."

Judge Jamie Tabor QC told Pye: "You say that you had a passion for stamps. Your philatelic skills may have been one thing, but your skills as a businessman were quite another.

"You were wholly incompetent. You were reckless with other people's money, trying to get yourself out of trouble."

Pye admitted that between December 1, 2004 and January 31, 2005 he, with intent to make permanent default in whole or in part on an exisiting liability to make a payment of £500 dishonestly induced Graham Chard to wait for payment by deception, namely by falsely representing that the cheque provided was valid and would be honoured.

He also pleaded guilty to the charge that between December 1, 2004 and March 21, 2005 he stole a quantity of stamps from Michael Laughton.

On a third count, he admitted evading liability, by telling Martin White to wait for a sum of £2,250 between August 29, 2004 and October 1, 2004 while having no intention of sending the cash.

Fourthly, he pleaded guilty to evading liability by telling Mr White between October 30, 2004 and February 1, 2005 to wait for a sum of £1,800 while having no intention of sending the cash.