Snapshot of buying internationally in 1972

neildrobertson

I found this bit of correspondence in a coin folder I bought a while ago. It's only notable in the sense that it gives me a snapshot look into what it was like buying and selling internationally about 50 years ago. A random exchange between a Michigan stamp dealer buying coins from an Austrian stamp dealer.

Mail must have moved fairly quickly back then. Margins must have been big to compensate for the exchange rates. I only started buying internationally in 2014.

Do you have any tales of the complex mechanics of dealing abroad before the internet age?

1984worldcoins

Lets hope that the global market and the internet will stay global..

bronco2078

awesome the way they made corrections. All that typing you don't start over just XXXXX and carry on.

291fifth

Buying drafts at the bank to pay for such purchases was a cumbersome and costly process.

cwt

1972 was 50 years ago? Scary!

neildrobertson

@291fifth said:
Buying drafts at the bank to pay for such purchases was a cumbersome and costly process.

Would the drafts usually be in USD and the foreign dealers would typically convert to their local currency themselves? Now I would be able to easily pay such a person with the Euro.

291fifth

@neildrobertson said:

@291fifth said:
Buying drafts at the bank to pay for such purchases was a cumbersome and costly process.

Would the drafts usually be in USD and the foreign dealers would typically convert to their local currency themselves? Now I would be able to easily pay such a person with the Euro.

It has been so long since I bought one I can't actually remember the details of their use. All I remember is that they were a costly bother.

SaorAlba

I vaguely remember getting bank draughts to pay for coins in the late 1980s, I think from dealers in Britain. As previously noted they were a bit expensive and a bit of a hassle.

pruebas

I used to do ham radio and listen to shortwave radio back in those days.

When writing to far off stations it was customary to send one or a few International Reply Coupons, which one could buy at a post office and whose value anywhere in the world was the price of a 1/2 ounce international letter.

Technically, those IRCs could be considered currency.

amwldcoin

I wonder if the USPS still sells international money orders. Back when I was collecting world coins I used those quite a bit.

neildrobertson

@amwldcoin said:
I wonder if the USPS still sells international money orders. Back when I was collecting world coins I used those quite a bit.

It looks like they do, but I can imagine them used often. It's probably only used when sending money to family if the family lives in an area without internet or sufficient banking services to receive wires.