The Ponzi Scheme
The profit that could be made by taking advantage of the differing postal rates in different countries to buy IRCs cheaply in one country and exchange them for stamps of a higher value in another country was the intended profit generator for a scheme operated by Charles Ponzi, which became the fraudulent Ponzi scheme; in practice, the overhead on buying and selling large amounts of the very low-value IRCs precluded profitability.
The selling price and exchange value in stamps in each country were since adjusted to some extent to remove some of the potential for profit, but ongoing fluctuations in cost of living and exchange rates make it impossible to achieve this completely.
Read more about this topic: International Reply Coupon
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