Manila stock cards & dealer cards shortage
Sept 26, 2019 17:05:31 GMT
Beryllium Guy, nikhil, and 3 more like this
Post by philatelia on Sept 26, 2019 17:05:31 GMT
I just had an interesting conversation with Subway stamps. As many of you know, manila cards are currently on back order at every stamp supply shop in the country. The story behind this is that there is only ONE machine in the entire world that manufactures manila stock cards and it is owned by GK aka Subway. The machine is located at their manufacturing facility in Altoona, Pennsylvania and, at the moment, it is broken.
The Subway representative said that the machine is over 85 years old and replacement parts are simply not available, so they have to machine anything that breaks. He warned me that the delay could be quite lengthy as you can well imagine. Dealers around the country have sold out all of their 3x5 and 8 1/2 x 11 stock cards and today I learned that the machine is also the only one that manufactures the large manila cards that dealers often use for large booklets and souvenir sheets. I lucked out and managed to find a few of the larger manila dealer cards, but if you use these, they are becoming very scarce, too.
Subway is still taking backorders for all of these items, so they must be confident that the machine will eventually be repaired. But, in the meantime, if you have any of these, you have what is now a scarce commodity!
The Subway representative said that the machine is over 85 years old and replacement parts are simply not available, so they have to machine anything that breaks. He warned me that the delay could be quite lengthy as you can well imagine. Dealers around the country have sold out all of their 3x5 and 8 1/2 x 11 stock cards and today I learned that the machine is also the only one that manufactures the large manila cards that dealers often use for large booklets and souvenir sheets. I lucked out and managed to find a few of the larger manila dealer cards, but if you use these, they are becoming very scarce, too.
Subway is still taking backorders for all of these items, so they must be confident that the machine will eventually be repaired. But, in the meantime, if you have any of these, you have what is now a scarce commodity!
