Thirteen Tons Of Stamps

David was a partner in Weeda Stamps, an old-fashioned downtown stamp store in Vancouver, Canada. One day, a man came into the store & asked if we bought stamps, because he had "a lot of stamps for sale". David answered "Of course we do; let's have a look". Out on the street was the man's parked Cadillac; he opened the trunk, revealing many large plastic bags crammed with fairly modern Canadian stamps on paper, also known as kiloware. An offer was made, which was accepted.

The next week the man came back with another trunkful & weeks followed weeks with the same events unfolding.

One week he finally said, "This isn't really working for me".

David asked, "Why not?"

"You don't understand; I have a LOT of stamps," the man replied.

It turned out that the man's father had been the type of person who not only didn't sleep much, but was constantly busy with his stamps. After many, many years of accumulating, the father passed away & the son was now disposing of the stamps stored in three barns.

David agreed to travel to the barns, & two trips later, in the largest U-haul available, all 13 tons of kiloware & stamps in bundles were safely delivered to the store. Thank goodness we had 1,400 square feet of storage & a basement besides!

How does one market that amount of Canadian stamps?

We made topical packets for sale in the tourist trade with the bundles; we also made packages of 100 different up to 500 different Canada stamps for both the store & the tourist trade. We bagged up stamps on paper to sell by various weights in the store; these we started trading with a kiloware dealer in Great Britain who would send us kiloware from Greenland, Germany, Kenya, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Singapore, etc. The postage was "free" because we both agreed to use high value modern commemorative stamps that were worth as much used as mint. When we sent the next lot to Great Britain, we would send his cancelled GB postage back & he would do the same with our Canadian postage.

All in all, a very popular addition to our retail operation!