How Pogs Made People Rich in Less Than One Year

I was fortunate to experience more than several manias in a relatively short period of time. Most manias, I was a participant - other manias, I was a close observer. I am using the term mania for an event (and period) where people went absolutely crazy for a fad, item, etc. A perfect example to fit this description is the Cabbage Patch Doll. This doll was introduced in short supply. People went absolutely crazy trying to buy this doll. Prices skyrocketed in the secondary market. I can only read about the events in the newspapers and magazine.

However, another fad mania came about in the 1990's. I was in the middle of this one. This mania was centered around milkcaps or pogs. It was a game that the kids played. It originated in Hawaii and made its way east to the mainland. A year before it hit California, a friend of mine told me that Pogs was huge in Hawaii and that I should get ready for the big wave that will soon eventually hit the west coast. I didn't really pay attention to his prediction at the time.

Although reflecting back, this very same friend developed the novelty hat called the "puckhead"....It was a hat that could be purchased at hockey games. You wore the puck on your head with the logo of the team you are supporting.....he sold a lot and made some really good pocket change.

Anyways, back to pogs. Sure enough, a year later, pogs hit the mainland. It started slowly at first. I owned a collectible store and the kids would come in after school asking if I sold pogs. I didn't and it really didn't occur to me that I should sell these game pieces.

In a couple of weeks, one of my distributors came into the store and said he was selling pogs and that I should buy a selection to resell. I was skeptical. I did purchase enough to fill one shelf in my display case. After school, the kids came in and I sold through at least 50% of my inventory in several hours. It basically paid for my initial investment.

The next several weeks, I kept flipping the sales from pogs into more pogs. Eventually, my whole display case and a wall was devoted to pogs. Customers were coming in throughout the day purchasing pogs. Soon, pogs was accounting for 60% of my sales. It was incredible.

Then a magazine came out with a price guide in it. This legitimized the pog into a true collectible and put value on certain designs. Some pogs were commanding tens of dollars. Soon themed designs were coming out. Licensed pogs with images of Elvis, Disney, etc were issued.

One day, a partner of a metal foundry came into the store looking for pogs for his children. He noticed that many of the high dollar pogs were made of metal. He inquired about the price and I told him that some were selling as high as $7 a piece. He laughed because the metal pogs we were looking at contained raw material costs of only fifty cents or less.

To make a long story short, my partner, the co-owner of the foundry, and me decided to manufacture our own pogs made of metal (called slammers)......During the same time, my partner convinced one of our customers (Sal) to start wholesaling pogs with us (me and my partner). He was a good salesman. He actually landed the K-Mart account. It was incredible. First one store would carry the Pogs and sales were on fire. The manager of that store would call another K-Mart endorsing Sal as a wholesaler. Soon Sal's route started to take off. So did our manufacturing business. We couldn't keep up with the orders.

All these events took place in under a year. Sal was able to sell to almost all the K-Marts on the west toward the midwest before the fad mania suddenly ceased. No one saw it coming. It was literally overnite when the orders just stopped. We, fortunately didn't have a lot of money in inventory and only made enough to fill purchase orders. We were too slow in expanding too big and didn't make the tons of money that other people did. But we weren't caught with out pants down either like other people experienced.

At the same time we were knee deep in purchase orders and manufacturing our metal pogs, a friend of mine was also selling his pog products. His niche was selling the raw materials such as blanks and stickers to decorate the pogs. He was a lot bigger than us and would routinely make ten thousand dollars a nite selling his products to other wholesalers and distributors. In under a year, he parlayed his sales into more inventory and eventually hit the million dollar sale mark within 8 months.

This was not an isolated case. Others who knew how to grow fast made a lot of money. Some literally became millionaires overnight. Others made a lot of money but also lost a lot of it when the fad suddenly ceased. (They had taken their profits and purchased more inventory - when the demand stopped, these entrepreneurs were left holding warehouses full of pogs and accessories) However, they used this experience in the next fad mania.