Woman Buys $3 Bag of Pens at Thrift Store—Then Discovers Their True Value
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
An Ohio woman has revealed how a seemingly ordinary bag of pens purchased from a local thrift store ended up being worth substantially more.
In a video posted to TikTok under the handle @cosmicdealheather, the eagle-eyed thrifter revealed how a bag of pens she recently purchased for just $3 ended up being worth somewhere in the region of $100. "You might be wondering why you would buy a bag of pens that's pretty much worthless?" she says on the clip. "The answer is not if they are drug rep pens."
"I have been selling things on eBay for 19 years and have sold different pharmaceutical rep pieces over that time period," user @cosmicdealheather, who requested her real name be omitted from this story, told Newsweek.
"Certain ones have a market just because it's funny to say you own a Viagra pen or want an Adderall note pad to match your prescription," the poster said.
To understand how this all started, you have to go back to 2006 and the publication of a report in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. It concluded that even the cheapest of gifts, whether they be T-shirts, cuddly toys or, of course, pens, were capable of influencing physician prescribing decisions.
By 2008, the pharmaceutical industry reached an industrywide agreement that brought an end to gift giving of this kind and, in the process, turned those gifts still in circulation into something approaching collectors' items.
At the time of writing, there are currently over 2,100 listings under the search term "Drug Rep Pen" on eBay. Highlights include a metal Zoloft pen on offer for $89 and a pair of brand-new OxyContin pens for sale at $79.99.
Cosmicdealheather said that pens linked to companies making "painkillers, antidepressants, stimulants, sleep aids, or benzos [benzodiazepines] tend to be the ones people want." She added that, while there is a market for these pens on sites like eBay, it can pay off to cast your net a little wider when it comes to making money off them.
"You can find them at thrift stores, estate sales, garage sales, anywhere someone might have old stuff they want to get rid of," the poster said.
This new bag of pens contains a few interesting ones and will fetch a decent price once she divides it up into a few different listings. However, there are even more valuable items out there. "I haven't found any of the really expensive ones," the poster said.
However, she has had luck with other pharma merch in the recent past. "I find drug rep merch a few times a year while thrifting," she said. "Last year, I got a whole box full of Zoloft tissues for free at a garage sale, so maybe one big score a year."
Though it is far from an exact science, Cosmicdealheather said that the demand for these items means anyone scouring the shelves at their local thrift store would be wise to take a closer look at any pens up for sale.
"If they see a bag of pens or something at the thrift store and it's full of pharmaceutical pens, it might have value," the poster said.
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