For those who don’t wish to click the link, Littleton Coin Company is offering to sell new customers an uncirculated two dollar bill. And as a bonus if you act fast, they’ll also give you a uncirculated National Park commemorative quarter. The cost if $2.00 with no shipping of handling charge.
If you do the math, you’ll see that Littleton appears to be offering to send you $2.25 worth of American currency for $2.00. I can see why they’re limited this to one per customer.
Am I missing some detail in fine print? Or is Littleton willing to pay people twenty-five cents just to get them on their mailing list?
For 25¢ they get name, address, email, phone of a person who is interested in collecting coins/bills. That’s a really good prospective customer for future offers. Easily worth a quarter to a coin seller.
Yup, same goes for any late night TV offer that says you can get a free trial of some weight loss drug, you just need to pay the $5 S&H fee. Now they have not only your info, but your credit card number as well. You can except recurring charges to start in about a month.
Littleton comes right out and says this. Right in the Not-Fine Print.
Did you notice the part where you’ll get their catalog… AND selections from their Free Examination COINS-ON-APPROVAL Service. (Don’t forget to “return balance” - - the coins they’ve sent you that you don’t want to pay their prices for… within 15 days)
First thing tomorrow, I’m going to stop by the bank and get me a crispy $2 bill for $2, with no obligations in the future…
More than just the mailing list, this is just the same old “We’ll send you something every month and sooner or later you’ll forget to send it back right away and then we’ll charge you triple” sucker bait.
I remember them, theyre in Littleton, NH. Back in the '40s, they would offer free sets or assortments of stamps, approvals included. Little classifieds in the back of Mechanix Illustrated. When the approvals come, you buy the ones you want, send back the others, with loose nickels and dimes in the envelope. A simple era. Kids were afraid to keep the approvals without paying, our dads warned us about the long of the law, who always gets their man (or boy).
Life was less complicated in those days, but the same underlying principles of marketing economics still held sway. There’s one born every minute.
Yup, just like those old mail order record clubs. They’ll send you something “on approval.” Oh, yes, they’ll send you a reminder that you can cancel it before it arrives, but they hope you’ll conveniently forget to do so. If you want to send it back, you pay the return shipping. In that case, they hope you won’t think it’s worth the hassle.
Then we’d quick cancel before we even got the first consignment… and then sign up again with a fake name. I still have vinyl that’s labeled “Manufactured by Record Club of America under license”. Or Columbia House or Word Family Record and Tape Club or RCA or BMG…
Yep, the old Columbia Record Club. I just can’t believe anyone ever paid for anything to those people. You would send that little card in with your 12 choices for 1 penny. ( plus 2 free). How did they make money?
I have about 200 CDs, a good majority of which were from Columbia House back in the 90’s. The system wasn’t all that complicated and had a ton of good deals, you just had to understand the rules.
They offered 12 CDs for a penny, you were then locked in to their program until you bought another 12 CDs (or whatever the number is).
So, you get your 12 CDs and a small flyer showing all their sales that month. This CD is $2.00 or buy these two get that one free. The trick was knowing that only full price CDs counted towards the amount you had to buy to ‘get out’, and knowing which ones were considered full price. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t know or understand that at first either. In fact, I had to call them to ask why the amount I had to buy wasn’t going down, but they explained it to me. After that, with each batch of cheap CDs I got, I always made sure to order one ‘full price’ one and I finished up with them in a few months.
IIRC, I did both Columbia House and BMG.
I’m not sure why you don’t understand why anyone would send them money. Sure, you send them a penny and get 12 CDs, but by doing that you’ve entered in to a contract and IIRC, if you don’t pick out CDs you want, they pick them out for you. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t hesitate to send people to collections.
Like I said, I understand why people had issues with them, but if you could work the system you could end up with a lot of good music for a very cheap price. In fact, looking over at their wiki page it says that in the 90’s they had about 10-15 million customers and made up for about 15% of all CD sales.
Traditionally, these services also had a tendency to process sign-ups the same day, but to take a few months to process a cancellation, with multiple confirmations and such with a long delay between them (during which time they’ve sent you and charged you for those months worth of merchandise).
I imagined a bunch of kids signed into these programs. That’s why I thought they would never give a thought to throwing all due bills in file 13.
I always wondered if maybe the LPs or cds were of poorer quality or factory seconds.
Littleton provides a service … if you need the 4H commemorative stamp to complete your 1937 year-set, they’re one of the few places that will sell that stamp individually … otherwise you’re stuck having to buy the year-set, again … most stamp dealers only deal in investment quality stamps so there’s a need to have a company selling collector’s quality stamps … but just keep in mind that’s what you’ll get from Littleton, collector’s grade and nothing better … if you can find it on eBay, it will be 20% the cost Littleton charges (not including S&H) …
The harsh reality is that $2 bill is worth $2 on the retail market … you’re only going to get $1 for it on the wholesale market, as 50% profit margin is standard for the industry …
I stopped doing business with Littleton when I received an “uncirculated” bicentennial Eisenhower dollar and though it was packaged properly it was covered in fingerprints … something no better than what I can get at a casino … so, strictly collector’s grade, and no better …
HOWEVER … I am impressed with Littleton’s stamp and coin albums, where we keep our collection, good quality stuff and priced reasonably compared to Scott’s or Lincoln’s material …
I was definitely under 18 when I signed up and you’re right, there’s probably not a whole lot they could have done if I just stopped paying them. IIRC it was in my name and I’m sure I wouldn’t have lied about my age if they asked.
I remember around that same time I got a pager. I found some place on the internet, signed up, got my pager. A year or two later my dad (who also had one) saw how high the bill was and switched me over to his plan. When he called they tried to tell them that I was locked into a contract. He told them that I was a minor and can’t sign a contract to begin with. From what I understand, they let it go and cancelled the contract without putting up much of a fight after hearing that.
After reading the OP I was gonna mention this but you beat me to it. I’ll just add that I remember in Boy’s Life, in the back where Littleton’s ads – and others in a similar vein – were run, there was a key lined paragraph explaining exactly what “on approval” meant and how to avoid getting dinged for extra.
I did the same thing. I bought the minimum number of cassettes to put an end to it. It was still a deal at the time for all those tapes, but I probably wouldn’t have bought that many if not for the way it was set up.
No, just overstock – ones that hadn’t sold as well as expected in the marketplace. Producing LPs or CDs is complicated enough that there’s no reason to intentionally produce poor quality ones – it’s just as easy to do the high quality ones. Any ‘factory seconds’ are just recycled.