Cheaper by the Dozen?
by Ken Perkins
Things are ‘Cheaper by the dozen’, or so goes the old saying. Stores and websites are filled with “BOGO” offers and other enticements to buy more than one of everything.
Accompanying the November 2018 edition of the monthly version of Linn’s Stamp News was a 36 page advertising flier from Nordfrim, a Denmark-based stamp and coin dealer. Among the many offers in the ad were several large stamp packets, containing from as few as 100 to as many as 3000 stamps from single countries. Looking over the prices, I spotted a good chance to see if the ‘cheaper’ adage held for stamps too. The table below, comparing the cost per stamp of different sized packets of stamps from the same country, demonstrates that, with a single exception, stamps aren’t ’Cheaper by the dozen’ at all.
The table below shows, for example, that while 1000 U.S. stamps cost 3.6 cents per stamp, larger packets of 2000 U.S. stamps cost 8.9 cents per stamp and 3000 will cost you 9.5 cents per stamp. The right-hand column of the table compares the per-stamp cost of the smaller packet to the next larger one for each country: the 1000 stamp U.S. packet costs 2.46 times as much per stamp as the 2000 packet, and the 2000 packet is 1.07 times more per stamp than the 3000.
The reason stamps don’t follow the ‘Cheaper by the dozen’ rule is really pretty simple. Many things of which we might buy multiples are fungible: any one unit is the same as the next. One can of Campbell’s soup is, as Andy Warhol memorably showed us, just like any other. Even when the items aren’t exactly alike, they’re similar enough in value to be grouped together on sale. But the stamps of any one country are, as anyone who’s looked at catalog listings can attest, not all alike. Some are far more valuable than others: the early issues of most countries are more valuable than the latest ones. Most stamps of most countries are cheap, but the closer you get to buying every stamp a country has ever issued, the more likely you are to be getting some of the more valuable ones. Thus a packet of 3000 will cost more per stamp than one of 300.
With the strange exception, in this ad, of Cuba – I guess we can blame Fidel, since he’s dead.
.