News and Views

Card Mall Contest Winner

Last week I announced that a Card Mall phonecard would be given away to a Phonecards On-Line reader, and many of you decided to try and win the card. That pleased me, along with the kind comments that many of you sent with your e-mail messages. The winner is:

Julie Browner

Congratulations, Julie. Please forward your mailing address to me, and I will send out the Card Mall card. Look for future contests in the Card Mall and elsewhere on-line. For those who are CompuServe members, a card will be given away this Sunday in the conference. (9 PM Eastern, Collectibles Forum) It's your opportunity to talk with me and other knowledgeable collectors and dealers live. For those who are not currently on CompuServe, I recommend that you subscribe

Other News of the Week

This week was relatively slow for phonecard news, at least from my perspective. The raging issue on-line has been about phonecard packaging. Should phonecards be removed from their envelope. Relatively recently, I discovered phonecard plastic pages for my albums. Sure, I knew about these before, but I could not justify the cost compared to baseball card pages. Since switching my collection, I am quite happy. No more cards sliding around, sliding out of the album, etc. The problem is, many cards are excluded from being placed in the album due to an envelope or excessive packaging.

My opinion on this issue is similar to others - It is difficult to say what should be removed and what shouldn't. A decision must be made on a card to card basis. An example of this are some cards I just received from Main Street Marketing, AHL phonecards. They came in a plain white envelope with a cello window. It's nice to have the envelope protect the card from being scratched, but once it was in my hands, the first place I wanted to put it was in an album. Over the long run, I doubt the value will be affected by whether or not the packaging was removed. On the other hand, some first edition Pacific Bell cards with cellophane wrappers won't fit in the album. If the packaging was removed, the card would appear used. I decided not to remove the card from the packaging.

Of course, the solution here would to be use the cards, then there would be no problem. However, that is not going to happen. I probably have a couple of years of phone time stored on cards, so even if I was determined to use every card in my collection, that would take a long time. Additionally, there are benefits to keeping some cards unused. The AT&T McDonalds 3 unit card is a prime example. Besides the fact that this card is expired, why would someone use a card that gave them 3 minutes of phone time, when the price difference between used and unused was about $40?

Another Company Goes Down

This is a copy of a fax received

To : All TLC distributors and associates
From: TLC management
Message:
Due to termination of service by TLC's carrier MCI based on TLC's inability to collect moneys owed from its distributors, TLC regrets to announce that effective immediately all sales of TLC phonecard products must cease. As of Monday, March 18,1996, TLC will no longer provide debit services.

TLC management

Alan's Viewpoint

This is very bad news - This means that two companies have gone under in the past month. If you were an average consumer who purchased a card to use, and found out that it was not working, you might never buy another phonecard again. For many people, we have one chance to present this as a viable option. I can see the calling card ads now, showing pictures of cards whose companies went out of business. My recommendation to collectors who buy cards to use and collect - Do not stockpile lots of cards from one company, you really can not know what the status of the company is. It is very easy to produce a phonecard, you just buy time. If you can't pay the bills, the PINS will be shut down and you will be left with a worthless card (at least worthless in the sense you will making no more calls with it.)

Until Next week, Happy Collecting,

Alan

Distribution

Phonecards On-Line is written and distributed by Alan Cohen. It is a weekly newsletter devoted to phonecards - Current news, viewpoints, and reviews of new issues. It is distributed free of charge, and available two ways.

1) On-Line on the World Wide Web. The address is: http://www.pcmreport.com

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