Page 191 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

sell, there probably were others. I ran a small advertisement in the newspaper
offering to buy all or part of the stamp collections of the people in Portland. I
secured several good collections in this way and presently I had a good-sized
stock at a cost of only $460. I discontinued the advertisement and began to
concentrate on selling this stock. Before long I had sold all but a few of the
stamps at a profit of $1,400.”

Carpenter contacts the universities, schools and even the museum in Portland.
School teachers, especially those teaching high-school classes, are interested
in stamps, since they are able to teach more colorfully such subjects as
history and geography through their use. Foreign canceled stamps, especially
those from France, India, England, Italy, Germany, Sweden, British South
Africa, Honduras, China, and Japan, are, regardless of issue, in constant
demand by school teachers. They bring as high as 300 to 400 per cent profit
to the stamp collector.

Catalogs listing the prices at which stamps should be sold are available from
wholesalers and some of the stamp listings give both wholesale and retail
prices. A stamp shop may be started either by advertising in the newspapers
for stamps, as Carpenter did, or by getting in touch with one of the many
wholesale stamp companies. These companies will generally submit a large
assortment of stamps on an approval basis, allowing the dealer a discount of
25 to 50 per cent. Hence he can start his shop with very little capital. An
excellent location for this type of business is in a circulating library near a
school.

Making a Grocery Store Pay

I

T IS a notorious fact that most people who open up a grocery store fail. The
mortality rate is higher than in almost any other business. There are a number
of reasons why this is true. Sometimes the man who opens up the store lacks
industry. He is just plain lazy. He may have picked a poor location. Or he
may have shown poor judgment in stocking his store. But the principal reason
for the high percentage of failures is that the average man who opens a