Now see if you can figure this one out. The clever folks at “Mystic Stamp Company” (note the word mystic) in Camden, NJ, have bought up a bunch of Tennessee State Quarters showing Elvis with unusually fluffy hair – and have colorized them! They have developed some “revolutionary technique” whereby this color portrait shall never “chip, fade or peel.”
The 30th anniversary noted on the coin is, one assumes, the 30th anniversary of the King’s reputed passing – August 16, 1977.
The reason it’s being offered in the newspapers right now is, of course, because today, January 8, 2010, would have been (for some, is) Elvis’ 75th Birthday.
Ergo, the exhibition opening this very day at the National Portrait Gallery: “One Life: Echoes of Elvis.”
Back to voodoo economics.
So, when it comes to ordering your coin or coins, you discover that they apparently cost nothing – that’s the “Yours Free” part of the ad - and that’s why, I guess, there’s a limit on the number of such mystic coins you can buy at one time: namely 5.
But then there’s the ”shipping and handling” of these numismatic treasures. That comes to $2.95 for the “yours-free” coin. But let’s say you decide to order the limit of 5 “free” coins. The shipping and handling for 5 (will they be in separate little boxes?) is 5 x $2.95 = $15.75.
What do you make of this…?
Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum since 1994, has been with the Baltimore institution for more than 20 years. A native of Minnesota, Gary received his B.A. from Carleton College in 1967 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1976 before working as Senior Associate for Byzantine Art Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.