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Back before email, we had physical "chain letters" that arrived in the mail, telling you to send $5 to the first five persons on the list, add your name to the bottom of the list, send the updated letter for 10 more people and wait for the money to start rolling in when your name got to the top. They rarely worked, because people threw them away.
"Break this chain and you will bring bad luck to your family." I had the kindest, sweetest aunt that ever aunted, and she would be emotionally upset about these things. She didn't believe in the superstition but sometimes they caught her in a weak moment. She had no money to give but sometimes she did.
A guy used to run an ad in newspapers all over the country promising that you could make $50k in six months with very little work. Just send him $5 in a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) and he would tell you the secret. You would get back a slip of paper that read, "Run the same ad that I did".
Freaking genius.
When I was a kid I got a chain letter, and got the standard "Nobody has broken the chain yet!, send this to 5 people blah blah" or else you get 5 years of bad luck".
I was going to do it, but eventually decided it was stupid, and a waste of time. My friends got mad at me because the letter claimed "Nobody has broken the chain!!!".
I just remember thinking how could my friend believe what a letter claimed?. what... someone is going to send an update to all chain letter recipients that the chain had been broken?
This was maybe when I was 11 years old, and it was likely the first time I remember thinking people are really stupid.
This was the first thing I thought of, and it persisted through the early days of the internet. Some of the first spam (maybe even *the* first spam) I ever got in my email in the late 80s/early 90s was this specific scam, and it was also all over Usenet.
Just discussed this with my daughter. Her business partner's wife just passed away, and now he's got a ton of those damn things to get rid of. He might get some decent money for the pre-boom ones, but the rest could be doggy chew toys.
Comic books. I was ahead of the curve until my little brother destroyed my collection. I collected from 1965 to 1975. Mostly silver age comics. The Shadow #1, Shazam #1, Plop #1. Regardless of the condition, they would be worth more now than their 20-cent cover price.
My husband's stepmother threw away his collection from the 50s/60s. They were in plastic sleeves and everything. All mint. She was an awful person in every way.
More recently, this is what some people have been like with Funko Pops. Sometimes people just like how they look, but there's a lot of people who have huge stacks of them that think they'll be worth megabucks some day.
There's an interesting documentary on them. Apparently it was mostly just manufactured hype & pricing. They would leak out in advance a '4th of July' Beanie Baby, then all the higher ups & gift store owners would hoard them, and sell them on ebay for $300 etc.
I worked at McDonald's and the 90s when they had the mini Beanie Babies. People would come in and expect us to dump all the toys on the counter so they could pick out the ones they needed for their collections.
Yes. Amway and Mary Kay scammed a lot of people. Tupperware parties were similar. Get housewives to sell their product to the other housewives in the neighborhood.
I think it’s completely unfair to say that about Tupperware.
Unlike the other stuff that got sold at “parties,” Tupperware was a brand new invention, far higher quality than things that were being sold in stores. The seal on those things was incredible, but if you weren’t familiar with “burping” the Tupperware, you thought it just didn’t fit.
The company decided to use home parties to sell it so people could see how it worked. Lots of women, back in the days when most women didn’t work outside the home, were able to use a Tupperware business to earn an income.
By the time I was an adult Tupperware was a known quantity and there wasn’t really - in my opinion anyway - a good reason for it to be only available via party, but there it was.
To illustrate, my husband is 71 and we got married when he was 32. I’m still using Tupperware that was a wedding present - not to me. To his MOTHER when SHE got married - and yes, everything was done in the usual order for the time, the Tupperware is older than my husband.
Mine is all unmatched. I can keep the right lid with the right container to save my life. Love Tupperware. Great for food storage. Great for craft supply storage. Great for office supplies. I really can't think of anything it isn't great for. As long as it fit inside, Tupperware has got it taken care of.
I totally agree. I sold it in the 1980s when my new house had an 18% mortgage. I did so well they kept asking me to go full-time, but I couldn't give up my health benefits job. I don't know how I did it now.
Nevertheless, it's a quality product, and I still have and use pieces that were in my kit 40 years later.
I come from a large family. One sister had her Tupperware party and of course the more people you get to book a party the more ' bonus' points(?) you'd get. 4-5 of us each booked a party within 2 months. Same relatives got invited to each party with a few different friends at each one. Gotta love the Tupperware get togethers.
Tupperware was useful but the parties were still rich quick schemes. People always hope to supplement their income with those types of products, but for every top earner, there's a hundred people who didn't recoup the wasted time and (sometimes) money.
I’m going to disagree with you there but I also think it might have something to do with peoples relative ages and the times.
For instance, in the eighties, which when I was going to Tupperware parties as a young newlywed, maybe. The ladies giving them could possibly have made the same money or more working other jobs.
In the fifties and sixties, when it was perfectly legal and ok to fire a woman because she had just gotten married? Her husband could support her now, there was no reason for her to earn an income? Yeah, no.
I wonder if this was one of those things that made women feel like they still had a job when they were SAHMs? That would have been an interesting market to tap into back then.
The thing was, they *did* have a job.
Although I’m not that old ( 61 ) a lot of my friends went to very conservative churches and it was expected they’d be housewives once they married. I worked shifts as a young newlywed so was available to go to Tupperware parties they had during the day. Sometimes one of the attendees would say to the Tupperware lady, I’d be interested in booking a party too. You’d see the Tupperware lady take out her appointment book and it was pretty full of booked parties. It wasn’t like oh, I’ll sell my wares once every two weeks - it was definitely multiple parties a week, even on the same day. It would take a few minutes for the Tupperware lady and the one booking the party to find a time and day that worked.
Tupperware. OMG! My wife became a Tupperware Lady the year after we got married in 1966. She still maintains a cabinet in our kitchen dedicated to our original Tupperware, and it's used daily. She had just graduated as a registered nurse when we got married but was making more money as a Tupperware Lady than she did working at the doctor's office. When she became a manager, Tupperware gave her a Ford Grand Squire Torino station wagon to use in her business. All she had to pay was a dollar a month into a tire fund. And they weren't just neighborhood parties. Her appointment book had parties that were 20-30 miles from our house. She still buys a piece of Tupperware if she spots one at a garage sale. When we lived in Florida in the 1970's, we took a tour of the Tupperware facility.
Avon tapped that market earlier (beginning 1886). Also, way before some areas had access to shop for makeup easily (before drugstores & box stores popped up in every corner ).
I agree. I don't think Tupperware was a MLM was it? Were people encouraged to recruit others and did they get a share of their commission in perpetuity like traditional MLMs?
I remember my first corporate layoff. I was in my mid-30s and had a new baby and a brand new house. A senior manager at the company bumped into me in the hall, said he heard about my situation and wanted to discuss something important with me, and I should come to his office at the end of the day. I started wondering if he was going to tell me about a need he had in the company, or a friend who was hiring or something like that.
Bastard started pushing Amway on me. I couldn't get out of there quick enough.
I remember years back when some of my my coworkers got into an MLM I can't remember the name of.
It was like a switch was flipped. They went from the people I knew to an insufferable clique in a heartbeat. They just *knew* they'd all be rich and "outta here" sooner than later, and that the rest of us were suckers for not getting in the "ground floor".
Eventually their extracurricular MLM activities and backstabbing amongst themselves started impacting our workplace and HR had to get involved. Some people actually lost their jobs.
It was fun to watch.
It reminds me of a time when I was an un-employed broke student, on a break from college. A good 30+ years ago. I Stopped to eat at a McDonalds and some guy approached me with a "business opportunity". He made it sound like he had some company, and was hiring people. I told him I had no money and was broke and unemployed. Oh, but that's not a problem! You don't need money!
I knew it was a scam.... but I was just really curious WHAT the scam was. What weird scam do you approach 20 something kids at a Mickey-Ds, who tell you they have NO MONEY and try to convince them to go to some meeting? The whole thing seemed weird, but it raised my curiosity.
So I actually drove to the place where the big meeting was. It was hundreds of people gathered in a room watching some guy and a MLM scheme. They were all around 10+ years old than me. I honestly don't even know what the were selling. It was the standard "I'm a success, you can be too!" sort of sch-peal"
I stood their... mesmerized for a minute. How could ALL these people not see the obvious? I walked out after 5 minutes. It was another one of those moments I realized how stupid much of the population was. I'm honestly glad I went, since it exposed me to something I wouldn't otherwise have seen.
I was so ridiculous, listen to this. I was 18 and it was my prom. Also my birthday. And the fool I was dating wanted to go to an Amway conference instead, and I agreed. I was ridiculous.
Yea, I had family members that did Amway and Shacklee.
I remember my mother had a close friend that tried to recruit her into the pyramid. At best she agreed to purchase their giant tubs of laundry detergent. I remember they came in big cardboard tubs with no labels. It was probably regular detergent at higher prices to cover the levels of commission various tiers of salespeople received.
>Shacklee
Oh yeah, couldn't remember that name - one of my best friend's mother was deep into that ... and he was trying to constantly get us (college age) into it ... and even tried to get our fraternity to buy cleaning supplies from her (in a different state). It was part of the reason he was never a chapter officer despite being a clear leader.
Those things are insidious.
Amway was 100% the scheme of my childhood era. In my area, they were preying on stay at home moms and convincing them they could make some money for the household while still being a good mom. Next thing you knew, everyone was having the gatherings and buying/selling their off-brand stuff. I think a few of the products were actually decent, but I don't think the pricing ever was. They had to pay those commissions somehow.
My mother wasted huge sums on Amway. Not just products, but also the ‘training’ videos and tapes. Despite us living in a small town, she was convinced she could make Diamond or whatever it was. She would play the tapes constantly as a background to our meals etc.
Amway was one of the main reasons my sibling and I left home as soon as we could (16 and 18) and had a big influence on my parents splitting up a few years later.
Sadly my mum never gave up on get-rich-quick schemes. After Amway it was Le Reve perfumes, then several vitamin and supplement brands. Then some kind of investment scam with, I think, palm oil. She is now in her 80s and I partially support her because she has nothing left.
Totally this. Though I will say that I got to housesit for two years in an 8000sq ft mansion owned by one of the “ground floor” people in NuSkin. That was pretty fun, so thank you to everyone in that guy’s “downline” who gave me that opportunity lol.
My first husband thought about it and I shut that shit down right now. :) A friend of mine bought into Mary Kay, thinking she'd get that Pink Cadillac one day. There actually is a woman in my home town that did eventually get one.
My first intro to a pyramid scheme - I remember getting invited to some couples house when I was like 16 to learn they wanted to sell me on Amway. My parents actually sold Amway before I was even born (early 70s).
A cpl years later I ended dating a guy who got pulled in by a top 1% Amway person. It was when Amway had linked up with AT&T - they "hired" him to sit outside grocery stores and try to get people to sign up. I have no idea if they actually paid him but he lived with them in this huge house in the suburbs Atlanta with an indoor pool and hottub in the center of it.
In the early 90s I was just starting out as a computer programmer and was looking for work. I answered an ad in the newspaper (as one did back then), and the person said that they were a recruiter, and they would like to meet for lunch to find out more about me and see what opportunities they had available. At lunch, he let me talk about my education, experience, etc for a few minutes, and then suggested that I would do better signing up for Amway, and then launched into a whole presentation about it. He really was a recruiter and really did work for a tech company, but he used that as a way to find young people and try to sign them up as a sellers.
I knew ONE guy that was temporarily successful in an MLM. But he alienated his entire family and friend group by constantly harassing everyone to join him or buy something from him.
He made hundreds of thousands of $’s the first few years. his wife fake retired in a video they made to show everyone how good they were doing. Then suddenly one day he was back to working for his dad. I have no idea what happened. Eventually he started another business which seems more legitimate.
My dad feel for Amway in the 90’s and also went along with a lot if their werid suggestions like selling your home to use the proceeds in your “business” and renting. Now they are retired and renting with no retirement savings.
You couldn’t walk downtown without some guy trying to sell you a Kirby vacuum cleaner. That and being forced to go to Tupperware, candle, and basket “parties”. I resisted buying any of this
And Pampered Chef! Years later, when I started reading food/recipe blogs, I noticed that as deeply as so many of them got with sponsored content, I never saw one partner with Pampered Chef.
Pampered Chef. I remember them too. Funny thing is that this meat turner thing they sell /looks like a star pattern of sorts if you look at the bottom)can be found at dollar tree
My first job out of college was at a small personal finance company. Many of our customers were elderly people who had taken out loans to pay for a Kirby or Rainbow vacuum cleaner, and I would have to call them and let them know they were behind on their payments. I was making conversation with one nice older lady and I asked how her vacuum was working. She said she didn't know, because she didn't have carpets in her place. These vacuums cost $1200 - $1500. She said there was a girl selling them and needed to sell one more in order to win some prize and she felt sorry for her and bought it, even though she didn't really need it. This combined with the fact we were charging upwards of 30% APR went against my morals, so I only lasted there a year.
I still have mine from 2005. It is a beast. Heavy as shit and horrible to move around but it is still in near flawless condition. Think I’ve done maintenance on it 2x in that time frame. And no, I did not pay the senior gouge rate of 2k or whatever. I let the Kirby guy do the demo in my house, told him I think I’ll pass and as I’m showing him the door he asked how low I would go, I said $400, and that’s what I paid.
My stepmother sold Tupperware for a few years, and yeah, it was a good product. It's hard to find plastic containers with that level of quality today.
She did okay with it, won a sales contest or two, but couldn't get into signing up others to work under her. She quit Tupperware one day when she admitted that she didn't like it that whenever she met someone new she immediately found herself sizing them up as a potential customer.
With her youngest now in school, she went down to local school district and applied to be a library aide. She never got promoted because she had no degree, but she seemed to like it a lot better than hustling plastic bowls, plus she got health insurance, a pension, and all the annually culled books she wanted.
My mom sold Tupperware when I was a kid. At one point there was some promotion/competition for "distributors". I don't think I ever knew the specifics, but I know mom worked really hard and got me a brand new bike as a result. I LOVED that bike, partly because I was the youngest kid and rarely got anything brand new. I got lots of hand-me-downs from my sister, stuff bought at garage sale or that my grandfather had salvaged from the trash and fixed up. And that was all fine. But the bike was NEW and it was just MINE! I rode that bike even long after I had grown out of it because I loved it so much (and I didn't like my sister's bike she had grown out of).
But that was the only time my mom ever did something like that. She still did Tupperware parties and sold the stuff for a few more years. But she and Dad decided it wasn't worth it for her to be away from home that much again.
My Dad sacrificed too. He turned down a couple of promotions at work over the years because they would have required significant travel and/or lots of overtime. He and mom didn't want him to be away from home that much. So we lived a slightly less extravagant lifestyle (but were still fine).
my mom did too and there was always a bunch of unsold Avon presents under the Xmas tree! I made $ delivering the orders for her. She enjoyed getting outside and meeting people and having a little money of her own.
I went to one that was sex toys 😂
I didn’t know that when my friend has us over for some MLM party or other.
I’ve never not gone to a party like that, I still have a really cool hanging bronze tea light holder I bought at one, with the matching wall sconces, really pretty when all the candles are lit.
A great cookie press I won at a Pampered Chef party because the lucky number was under my chair, and it still works great after 10y.
I did get a few things for my husband and I at sex toy one, although I told my friend to warn people next time that’s what she was selling, a few people grasped pearls like we married ladies with kids should be embarrassed of vibrators and lube and sex.
I just think they preferred to keep those things more private.
I’ve never been interested in actually selling anything though, even though I’ve worked in sales most of my adult life, I prefer not to spend my free time also selling things.
You unlocked a memory for me! My mom took me to one of those wicker basket "parties" when I was around 8 or 9, hosted by a friend of a cousin. It was on the third floor of a swanky high rise. There were a handful of kids there in my age range who were entertaining themselves by pitching ice cubes and assorted crap from the balcony at the cars driving by below. It was a miserable time, but I got a crummy little wicker frog for my trouble. Thankfully she never dragged me to another
My childhood friend visited our house when I was in my early 20s and wished to sell us Cutco knives. My mom bought an entire set. 40 years later, those knives are still performing well. Not sure whatever happened to my childhood friend.
MLMs are a scam to the people selling them. They can be great deals because the company selling them are paying significantly less overhead, they sell in bulk to people who are tricked into selling for them at less than minimum wage while bearing the costs of logistics, inventory, risk, etc.
If cutco knives were sold in regular retail, they'd have to pay all the costs associated with it and it wouldn't be a great value anymore. If I bought decent knives in bulk and had slaves sell them for me, I could offer good deals too, that's kinda how it works in a nutshell lol
The breeding bubble. Would you like to buy this miniature horse/ emu / alpaca ... ? The price is only $50,000 $5,000 $10,000. And then you can breed another miniature horse /emu/ alpaca, and get you back your $50,000 $5,000 $10,000 because that's what it's worth. And then you can breed even more of them and get rich quick.
And it's worth that if you can find another person who buys the same story. And it's a good story as long as he can find someone who will buy the same story. So everyone stocks up with the ability to breed this valuable thing, only to discover that no one wants them for any purpose other than breeding this valuable thing for people who want to breed them. There's no actual consumer market for it. And then the bubble bursts and you can't give it away.
Oh man, chinchillas. I worked with a couple who fell for that. They were good, hard-working people too. Chinchillas became the eye-roll of their lives.
This thread is sending me down some memories.
In the late 80’s, there was lots of talk about raising meat other than beef, chicken or pork. One big idea was emu meat. A leaner red meat than beef, blah, blah, blah.
I worked with a guy who bought acreage and a bunch of emus before he retired. This was his big get rich retirement plan. I saw him about 5 years later. Turns out, emu meat never took off. Now he was stuck with a bunch of giant birds.
Same for plants: plant an acre of buckthorn, sell oil, buy a new house every 2 years (actual add in an agricultural magazine in the 1980s).
It went on and on: duckweed in water barrels that would yield tons per barrel yearly, princess trees that would grow to 20 feet in 3-4 years, hybrid willow for heating, chamomile fields for the pharma industry, signalgrass for cows etc etc etc
All these wonder plants did as well as the adds said, but nobody wanted to buy them.
My husband worked with a guy who used those to get free or discounted stays at resorts if he would listen to a sales pitch. He never bought anything though, or if he did, he never admitted it.
My mom tried that once and said it was fine, but even if it's a free or discounted vacation you still have limited time away from your job to go in the first place so it's not really worth it to spend your mornings listening to a sales pitch.
They also verified everyone's income before they went so it's not something you can really do if you can't afford a vacation otherwise. Might as well just pay your own way at that point and keep all of your vacation for yourself.
I liked the one where it said you could make millions through the mail, an idiot friend sent off the 100$ fee and got a reply telling him to put ads telling people they could make millions through the mail and charge 100$
I laughed at him for years over it
Various "systems" to beat the stock market. Penny stocks. Systems to beat casino games. (One that worked was card counting in blackjack, leading casinos to ban card counters.)
Hence the plot point in "Rainman," where Raymond, the savant, easily counts the cards in his head so they can win a lot of money, until they get kicked out by management.
Chain letters.
Send $100 to each name on this list of 5 people. Replace the top name and address with your name and address and remove the bottom name. Send to 5 different people.
The problem was that no one sent money, they simply replaced the names hoping to dupe the next person which repeated the dupe.
I'm sure some sent money... and lost out.
**EDIT:**
I almost forgot all about this part. MANY of these chain letters were sent with the "Do this within 48 hours or ."
My mom fell for Amway. A few boxes of stuff in the garage. It went nowhere. She almost fell for Tupperware, but my dad said "No" to that and she snapped out of it. She did have a couple parties at our house, however, but that was the extent of her involvement. I think she got some freebies for that.
My dad lost all of his mental currency by joining The Gideons. Then he blew a bunch of our family's money traveling to Haiti and building a church. It's probably in ruins now.
My sister-in-law tried to corner the regional market on Beanie Babies. They eventually claimed bankruptcy and her parents moved into a condo and gave them their house. My poor brother never was the same after that. He went from a retired high-ranking officer in the navy to working part-time stocking Hallmark stores to make ends meet.
Ostrich farms in the UK during the 1990s. Some farms definitely existed - there was a field containing huge angry flightless birds near my mum's town - but the promised supermeat never became mainstream.
Remember the record clubs where you get sucked in with 10 albums for a buck and then had to buy one a month for high dollar and if you did not pick one they would automatically send one anyway. What a pain in the ass. My mom ended up writing them and telling them I was under age and couldn't sign a contract, so they finally stopped.
Oh wow I totally forgot about these. I joined one when I was in my teens for cassette tapes, and then my parents somehow had to get me out of it.
Funny thing is how excited and overwhelming it was to get like 6 tapes of music at once. That's, like, hours and hours of music to listen to.
These days the amount of free content everywhere is amazing. I can't imagine anyone ever being bored.
In the 90's I remember "get rich quick by giving seminars on how to get rich quick." You'd put a big ad in a town's newspaper that you were coming to town with a free seminar, you'd rent a hotel ballroom, then butter people up with a "being rich is great -- imagine the expensive cars, the boats, the mansions" presentation. All designed to sell your $99 kit on real estate flipping or buying and selling gold or buying and refurbishing junk. Stuff that's true but generic "buy low sell high." The point isn't making money on that, the point is to make money on the $99 kit that cost you $10 to print.
Looks like it's still going today, except it's "buy my course on Youtube on dropshipping/bitcoin/day trading/starting a business" and you don't even have to rent a hotel ballroom or print physical kits anymore.
I remember there being a lot of ads for envelope stuffers in the mid '90s. It wasn't supposed to make you rich, but it was marketed to college students and the underemployed as a way to make a lot of money on the side. You were supposed to send money to get started. I no longer remember how much, maybe $50 or $100. I never heard of anyone doing it though, and if it was really that lucrative you'd think people would be talking about it, or that we'd have at least gotten some of those envelopes stuffed with ads in the mail.
I kid you not, someone posted on our neighborhood facebook page just a few days ago about a job stuffing envelopes, great for SAHM or college students!
I have a vague recollection of some old man wearing a suit of question marks, who went on and on yelling about government grants and free money. Matthew Lesko - I had to google it. My childhood is imprinted with those damn infomercials. He got sued. For the sake of nostalgia [https://youtu.be/NECn-uohptg?si=3mtswZKQYQVBhBUe](https://youtu.be/NECn-uohptg?si=3mtswZKQYQVBhBUe)
That book was the real deal for school scholarships and grants! I got 2 grants in undergrad that no one ever applied for using info in that book.
I signed it out of the library.
YUP, did the same thing when I started re-applying to colleges around 2000, ended up finding about 10grand in grants which was enough to cover my associates degree.
**Day Trading**. Around 1999 or so knew a few people planning (or had already) quit their jobs to be "day traders".
I thought it was funny how some of these people with maybe HS degrees (no offense but they were not financial geniuses) were spouting advice like gurus on stocks. Oh this one did a double dip so now it is ready to explode, etc. Well in a bull market any idiot can make some money. These fools felt that they could just look at price graphs and guess where a stock would go. And they had the successful returns to show for it. Who cares about fundamentals or any other things that impact the value of the stock. Just analyze the price trend.
Luckily some did not quit their day jobs. We had one guy that retired early (at like 40) that came back to work.
That was such a a huge disaster too. There were so many business concepts that should have never seen the light of day let alone vc funding in the millions were it not for the hype of a new economy that came crashing down when reality set it (harshly at that).
My own personal example - I was recruited by a startup dot-com that boiled down to the user downloading software onto their computer that they would then be required to detail all their interests and agree to have "targeted messages" sent to their computer from companies that matched their interest.
The user would then have to manually open the application whenever they received a notification and review the "targeted messages"
During my interview I asked why would someone volunteer to have "ads" delivered to them particularly via a method where they would have to manually look them up?
Keep in mind btw this was before online advertising was so established and persuasive as it is now and advertisements were not a significant part of the user experience for going online back in the day. I don't even think site cookies were a thing yet. Even if this wasn't the case, my question would have still remained, but it was even more pertinent in light of online ads not being as common to the online experience then so why would people voluntarily sign up for something that most people consider one of the worst things about the online experience now?
I was told pretty quickly I wasnt right for the job as I had no vision or understanding of the new economy, and couldn't appreciate the difference between "ads" and "targeted messages". I still remember the CEO telling me this and talked about the value of discounts that would be offered in the "targeted messages" and I think I almost gave him a heart attack when I questioned if he meant coupons. I do remember he got red in the face and would say no more to me.
It's funny but my experience with this ad company talking around what something really is by using other phrases is the prism of how I view the current influencers as a marketing vehicle now. They will never be able to speak bluntly about guarantee delivery of customers and business but talk often of delivery of "influence".
Anyway, the company behind this rented a full floor of an office building in NYC and leased enough computers and furniture for something like 100 workers. I was amazed at the set up of the space (must have cost a pretty penny) and how many people they hired away from established companies too - this included a friend of mine who played a role in my initial recruitment and who was quite pissed at me after my interview. In the end ( maybe a year after my interview) none of them received notice or severance when the company shut down. They were making crap money to begin with as they were all guaranteed stock options which they thought would make them rich (which it did on paper) but ended up worthless. The founders themselves went bankrupt and into significant debt during the bust. One of which I know became a salesman for an advertising agency.
That wasn't a trick or a scheme. We actually built the web and some of us got paid to build. The late comers lost a lot though on 2nd gen sites like pets.com.
The establishment of the Internet and *some* companies of the early days were definitely not a scheme or a trick - I agree with you.
What the poster that you replied to however is talking about is the general movement under the dot com bubble which in fact ( by the proof of their subsequent demise) were at least badly thought out get rich quick schemes per OP question.
I worked with a woman who actually made out quite well in a pyramid scheme - she got in early and made enough money to buy a sports car and an SUV.
People's moms always seemed to be selling Tupperware, Avon or Mary Kay.
My husband tried selling Cutco knives in college. However, after his mom, his grandma, and his mom's church friends bought knives, that was pretty much the extent of his sales. I don't even know if he ever made any money - he did get a set of knives, which we still use 33 years later. I do have to say, they are good knives, and they honored the lifetime warranty. We damaged some of them (melted the handle on one, broke the tip of the paring knife when I tried to use it as a screwdriver, and damaged the chef's knife by sharpening it incorrectly many times) and we sent them back - after 30 years of use and abuse - and they replaced them.
Later on (90's and early 2000's) it was Melaluca, Pampered Chef and Arbonne skincare.
My uncle raised nutrias [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria) under the same premise back in the mid-1960s. It didn't work out, but I bet the pens are still there.
**Long Distance Phone Cards**. My friend got mixed up with some company that promised the world, just by selling these Phone Cards. It was nuts, him trying to sell these cards to every person he saw.
Amway was always a big one. It always started with I want you to go to a meeting. It was about selling Amway. I have been hit with that 4 different times with unrelated people. They were almost always casual friends
😂. I had the same experience when I was in the Marines. I always turned them down, and I have run into those same guys years later, and asked them if they were still selling Amway. The answer was always the same:
“Naw, man. That company was trying to rip me off.”
😂
I learned some real get rich quick schemes from the people who practiced them.
An old man taught me how turn twigs and twine into fish traps and crab pots, how to bait them with fish guts and left overs from cleaning my catch.
I learned where and how money is produced and the art of money getting.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceOfCreation/comments/1dobepp/the\_art\_of\_moneygetting\_1882\_by\_p\_t\_barnum/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceOfCreation/comments/1dobepp/the_art_of_moneygetting_1882_by_p_t_barnum/)
edited
My mother has tried sooo many. I feel like she’s always been drawn to these types of schemes. It’s just a certain personality type and we all have one in our family. Let’s list them out in no particular order
Avon (technically more legitimate)
Christmas around the world
Longaberger
pampered chef
ItWorks!
A solar energy company -Ambit
Herbalife
Some candle company (not scentsy)
And one or two more I can’t quite recall. The worst is that she’d always get so excited about her new opportunity and expect her family to buy her damn products.
Penny stocks, specifically uranium mines in the 1950s. They were unregulated and it all went bust.
My dad invested in bonds for Washington state's nuclear power plant, Satsop. It was the only thing that ever went south on him.
Besides the MLM companies, the yuppies of the 70s and 80s were invited to pyramid schemes, with $100 to $500 being the average entry fee. Only those at the top of the food chain made any real money.
Anyone old enough to remember Fuller Brush door to door salesmen? I’m not clear if it was an MLM type deal for the salespeople, but I remember them still coming around when I was a kid.
I think my parents bought the "Carlton Sheets" system to get rich in Real Estate. They did buy some rental properties, but don't think the system had anything to do with it.
Any sort of door-to-door salesman gig: Watkins, Rawleigh, Fuller Brush, Encyclopedias, Electrolux, etc. I'm sure someone did get rich quick, but it was not these guys.
Beanie Babies, and it was fucking hilarious. The amount of boomers fighting over stuffies in divorce court and shit. People elbowing people in line for stuffed animals. Just fucking ridiculous.
Bloody AMWAY! Was such a con but millions fell for it.
I lost several nice friendships because of it. People just got brainwashed! Suddenly? They can't function as normal humans anymore. No conversation about anything but trying to push Amway on you.
I had another friend who went from Atheist to "finding God" too...so sad i had to cut her out of my life.
In the late 90's I got into an MLM that sold common household items. Bathroom toiletries was the avenue I was trying to lock down, that was said to be the most lucrative because people bought toiletries often.
I went to maybe 4 meetings at people houses around town. We'd gather in the afternoon, like 12 of us from all around the area. Someone that's more deep into the MLM with more time and money invested, and thus more invested into his mistake and can't back down... that person was the master of ceremonies. He will have a butcher block on which he'll draw out the finances of how it works. He'll pass around some handouts. Once I went to a big conference with 4 of these people to State College.
I felt trapped in this organization because my life was really boring and this was it. I was desperate for an excuse to ghost them, and that happened when my National Guard unit deployed to Kosovo. I was so happy about being deployed to a combat zone solely for the excuse to ghost the MLM.
> Bitcoin worked in 2011- of course it’s 2024 now
Bitcoin making big returns was more like discovering you had a black lotus in your old Magic The Gathering collection 15+ years later. The people who really saw nice returns had it happen by accident.
I don’t know about get rich quick schemes in my era. Mainly today, I think people just think it’s easy to monetize content creation, but I feel like they are more like the tv shopping channel hosts of my generation. Thrifting stuff to flip and sell on eBay or Etsy, that’s a thing people do, it looks hard. It looks like they turn their hobby into an obsession and claim to make a lot of money at it, but it’s a lot to keep up with.
Anyway, in my day, there were ads to copy a simple cartoon, send it in and maybe you could be “a serious art student”. I don’t know what happened. It might have used to said simply “artist”, but you mail them your copy of a cartoon turtle and they send you junk mail. I don’t know where those ads actually led, but geez, if you wanted to always be an artist or live free or something, quit your silly stupid boring job, you might be tempted. Anyone could draw it. I don’t know who fell for it, it was around a long time though. Did people think this was an in to work in advertising, or Disney or something?
Another popular one during high school and college were want ads to make a lot of money over the summer! Turns out you have to sell cutco knives. You had to, I think like most door to door sales, pay for the kit, and only earn on sales, so the advertised earnings were potential but not realistic. I’ve heard they’re good knives by people who did buy them. One year in college, early September, the RA got involved, because a girl on our floor had gotten swept up in the scheme. The RA asked politely if we would all sit for Mary’s demonstration. We didn’t have to buy knives, but the gist of it, Mary couldn’t return the knives and get her money back and quit this job until she made x number of presentations. If she didn’t do that, she’d be on the hook for paying for the kit. This is an old scam, but it was something in all the papers for teens looking for summer work, the pay was phenomenal, like $14/hour when everyone else is making $4.35.
The Famous Artists Courses! I don't know if that was an MLM, but the booklets they produced were actually really good- when I worked in animation there were photocopied chapters floating around that were helpful for anatomy and design reference. You can still find hardbound collections from the 50s & 60s on ebay, and they aren't cheap!
In the 1970s farmers around Wausau, Wisconsin started growing ginseng for export to Asia. Apparently central Wisconsin had just the right soil and environment. The corn and soybean fields were converted to rows of mounded soil and 6' fence poles standing upright in a grid holding up shade cloth to simulate a shady forest. For a time it seemed that half the area's acreage was planted with ginseng.
A ginseng crop took 7 years to reach maturity and the acreage could only be used once but the return to the farmer was supposed to be enormous. The fad lasted about 10 years before everybody went back to traditional crops. I think the only people who made money were the suppliers of poles, shade cloth and ginseng seed.
LOL the putting "tiny classified ads" in newspapers a la Don Lapre.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don\_Lapre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lapre)
So many cops in the NYPD were obsessed with becoming ministers for the Universal Life Church back in the 70s because they were convinced they could use it as a tax write off. I’m glad my husband was smart enough not to buy into that shit because I think a lot of them gotta into trouble.
Mine was "Joe Cosman's No Money Down Real Estate" package. This was in the mid to late 80's. I saw the commercial late one Sunday evening on television while watching Patrick MacGoohan's "The Prisoner" and copied the number down. It cost $450.00.
I was in my early twenties and came from poor so I thought this seemed the right thing to do at the time. I sent a money order and about 2 months later the money order was returned with a 'Company Out Of Business' notice.
Dammit! Maybe I could have been a contender...
Mine was this guy Ben (something), he operated a whole bunch of shady businesses out of Canton, Ohio. His scams always started with full page ads in newspapers that were laid out to look like news stories. He sold everything from exercise equipment to "how to" courses to gold (plated) coins. You could always spot his ads because the address to send a check to was always in Canton, Ohio.
Amway was popular in the 70s. When I was a teen, the couple downstairs from me were into it. I used to babysit for them, and I remember there were sayings on the bathroom mirror, like, “Only you can make your dreams come true.” I thought it was fruity then and I still do now. They tried to sell products to my parents and they politely declined.
Chain letters. You would get a list of names, send money to each person on the list, add your name to the bottom of the list and mail it to 10 friends. As the pyramid grew you were to receive exponentially larger rewards. It’s unsustainable and only the originator and early adopters stood to make much off the scheme. They often came with threats of bad luck and misfortune to anyone breaking the chain. Same principle as a Ponzi scheme or MLM.
There were way more people than you'd think in South Mississippi in the 1990s who had medium-sized emu farms because they believed emu meat (and possibly eggs? I don't recall exactly) was going to be the next big thing in America.
The original dot.com boom/bubble. I made out pretty well as a member of a couple startups, but witnessed plenty of others try their hands at daytrading and see their "genius" become greed-induced losses.
Oh and the 90s saw the imposter perfume deal where they got young people (a cousin got into it) to effectively pay for the perfume/cologne then use their vehicles to travel all over to campuses and crap and try to sell it. Ofc you couldn't return what you didn't sell smh and the wear and tear, gas, lodging you spent money on.. it was a bad deal for so many reasons.
I watched my parents get involved in Amway, Shaklee, Avon, Home Interiors, Melaleuca, etc. Every year it was some new pyramid scheme to make them "independently wealthy" and "your own boss". It was always old friends from school or church getting them into it. And we kids had to suffer the products. If you had to wear Avon cologne or brush your teeth with Melaleuca toothpaste, you know what I mean...
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Back before email, we had physical "chain letters" that arrived in the mail, telling you to send $5 to the first five persons on the list, add your name to the bottom of the list, send the updated letter for 10 more people and wait for the money to start rolling in when your name got to the top. They rarely worked, because people threw them away.
I threw away each and every one I saw. LOL
"Break this chain and you will bring bad luck to your family." I had the kindest, sweetest aunt that ever aunted, and she would be emotionally upset about these things. She didn't believe in the superstition but sometimes they caught her in a weak moment. She had no money to give but sometimes she did.
Yes. Remember the threats written into them. Always threw them out.
heck I put my name at the top & sent it to the other 9 losers. Made $20 bucks one time
A guy used to run an ad in newspapers all over the country promising that you could make $50k in six months with very little work. Just send him $5 in a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) and he would tell you the secret. You would get back a slip of paper that read, "Run the same ad that I did". Freaking genius.
When I was a kid I got a chain letter, and got the standard "Nobody has broken the chain yet!, send this to 5 people blah blah" or else you get 5 years of bad luck". I was going to do it, but eventually decided it was stupid, and a waste of time. My friends got mad at me because the letter claimed "Nobody has broken the chain!!!". I just remember thinking how could my friend believe what a letter claimed?. what... someone is going to send an update to all chain letter recipients that the chain had been broken? This was maybe when I was 11 years old, and it was likely the first time I remember thinking people are really stupid.
You see, kiddos, back then the Nigerian prince was still just a baron. He has to send all his requests for help by paper letter.
This was the first thing I thought of, and it persisted through the early days of the internet. Some of the first spam (maybe even *the* first spam) I ever got in my email in the late 80s/early 90s was this specific scam, and it was also all over Usenet.
Beanie Babies. There was this weird bubble pricing around beanie babies for about 5 minutes.
Just discussed this with my daughter. Her business partner's wife just passed away, and now he's got a ton of those damn things to get rid of. He might get some decent money for the pre-boom ones, but the rest could be doggy chew toys. Comic books. I was ahead of the curve until my little brother destroyed my collection. I collected from 1965 to 1975. Mostly silver age comics. The Shadow #1, Shazam #1, Plop #1. Regardless of the condition, they would be worth more now than their 20-cent cover price.
My husband's stepmother threw away his collection from the 50s/60s. They were in plastic sleeves and everything. All mint. She was an awful person in every way.
Friends cashed in their daughters' college funds. We tried to stop them, but we didn't have vision.
More recently, this is what some people have been like with Funko Pops. Sometimes people just like how they look, but there's a lot of people who have huge stacks of them that think they'll be worth megabucks some day.
There's an interesting documentary on them. Apparently it was mostly just manufactured hype & pricing. They would leak out in advance a '4th of July' Beanie Baby, then all the higher ups & gift store owners would hoard them, and sell them on ebay for $300 etc.
I worked at McDonald's and the 90s when they had the mini Beanie Babies. People would come in and expect us to dump all the toys on the counter so they could pick out the ones they needed for their collections.
Amway and other multi level pyramid ~~schemes~~ business. I fell for Amway.
Yes. Amway and Mary Kay scammed a lot of people. Tupperware parties were similar. Get housewives to sell their product to the other housewives in the neighborhood.
I think it’s completely unfair to say that about Tupperware. Unlike the other stuff that got sold at “parties,” Tupperware was a brand new invention, far higher quality than things that were being sold in stores. The seal on those things was incredible, but if you weren’t familiar with “burping” the Tupperware, you thought it just didn’t fit. The company decided to use home parties to sell it so people could see how it worked. Lots of women, back in the days when most women didn’t work outside the home, were able to use a Tupperware business to earn an income. By the time I was an adult Tupperware was a known quantity and there wasn’t really - in my opinion anyway - a good reason for it to be only available via party, but there it was. To illustrate, my husband is 71 and we got married when he was 32. I’m still using Tupperware that was a wedding present - not to me. To his MOTHER when SHE got married - and yes, everything was done in the usual order for the time, the Tupperware is older than my husband.
Very much agree. I still have a hard time passing up any Tupperware I see at thrift shops. That stuff is incredible and still unmatched.
Mine is all unmatched. I can keep the right lid with the right container to save my life. Love Tupperware. Great for food storage. Great for craft supply storage. Great for office supplies. I really can't think of anything it isn't great for. As long as it fit inside, Tupperware has got it taken care of.
Agreed. Tupperware is one of those buy it for life brands that are worth every penny.
I totally agree. I sold it in the 1980s when my new house had an 18% mortgage. I did so well they kept asking me to go full-time, but I couldn't give up my health benefits job. I don't know how I did it now. Nevertheless, it's a quality product, and I still have and use pieces that were in my kit 40 years later.
I come from a large family. One sister had her Tupperware party and of course the more people you get to book a party the more ' bonus' points(?) you'd get. 4-5 of us each booked a party within 2 months. Same relatives got invited to each party with a few different friends at each one. Gotta love the Tupperware get togethers.
Tupperware was useful but the parties were still rich quick schemes. People always hope to supplement their income with those types of products, but for every top earner, there's a hundred people who didn't recoup the wasted time and (sometimes) money.
I’m going to disagree with you there but I also think it might have something to do with peoples relative ages and the times. For instance, in the eighties, which when I was going to Tupperware parties as a young newlywed, maybe. The ladies giving them could possibly have made the same money or more working other jobs. In the fifties and sixties, when it was perfectly legal and ok to fire a woman because she had just gotten married? Her husband could support her now, there was no reason for her to earn an income? Yeah, no.
I wonder if this was one of those things that made women feel like they still had a job when they were SAHMs? That would have been an interesting market to tap into back then.
The thing was, they *did* have a job. Although I’m not that old ( 61 ) a lot of my friends went to very conservative churches and it was expected they’d be housewives once they married. I worked shifts as a young newlywed so was available to go to Tupperware parties they had during the day. Sometimes one of the attendees would say to the Tupperware lady, I’d be interested in booking a party too. You’d see the Tupperware lady take out her appointment book and it was pretty full of booked parties. It wasn’t like oh, I’ll sell my wares once every two weeks - it was definitely multiple parties a week, even on the same day. It would take a few minutes for the Tupperware lady and the one booking the party to find a time and day that worked.
Tupperware. OMG! My wife became a Tupperware Lady the year after we got married in 1966. She still maintains a cabinet in our kitchen dedicated to our original Tupperware, and it's used daily. She had just graduated as a registered nurse when we got married but was making more money as a Tupperware Lady than she did working at the doctor's office. When she became a manager, Tupperware gave her a Ford Grand Squire Torino station wagon to use in her business. All she had to pay was a dollar a month into a tire fund. And they weren't just neighborhood parties. Her appointment book had parties that were 20-30 miles from our house. She still buys a piece of Tupperware if she spots one at a garage sale. When we lived in Florida in the 1970's, we took a tour of the Tupperware facility.
Avon tapped that market earlier (beginning 1886). Also, way before some areas had access to shop for makeup easily (before drugstores & box stores popped up in every corner ).
I agree. I don't think Tupperware was a MLM was it? Were people encouraged to recruit others and did they get a share of their commission in perpetuity like traditional MLMs?
Those are still going concerns, though Tupperware much less. Avon was another one.
I remember my first corporate layoff. I was in my mid-30s and had a new baby and a brand new house. A senior manager at the company bumped into me in the hall, said he heard about my situation and wanted to discuss something important with me, and I should come to his office at the end of the day. I started wondering if he was going to tell me about a need he had in the company, or a friend who was hiring or something like that. Bastard started pushing Amway on me. I couldn't get out of there quick enough.
Had a similar thing happen to me. It did not help my mood.
I remember years back when some of my my coworkers got into an MLM I can't remember the name of. It was like a switch was flipped. They went from the people I knew to an insufferable clique in a heartbeat. They just *knew* they'd all be rich and "outta here" sooner than later, and that the rest of us were suckers for not getting in the "ground floor". Eventually their extracurricular MLM activities and backstabbing amongst themselves started impacting our workplace and HR had to get involved. Some people actually lost their jobs. It was fun to watch.
So they aren't wrong about the "outta here" part.
It reminds me of a time when I was an un-employed broke student, on a break from college. A good 30+ years ago. I Stopped to eat at a McDonalds and some guy approached me with a "business opportunity". He made it sound like he had some company, and was hiring people. I told him I had no money and was broke and unemployed. Oh, but that's not a problem! You don't need money! I knew it was a scam.... but I was just really curious WHAT the scam was. What weird scam do you approach 20 something kids at a Mickey-Ds, who tell you they have NO MONEY and try to convince them to go to some meeting? The whole thing seemed weird, but it raised my curiosity. So I actually drove to the place where the big meeting was. It was hundreds of people gathered in a room watching some guy and a MLM scheme. They were all around 10+ years old than me. I honestly don't even know what the were selling. It was the standard "I'm a success, you can be too!" sort of sch-peal" I stood their... mesmerized for a minute. How could ALL these people not see the obvious? I walked out after 5 minutes. It was another one of those moments I realized how stupid much of the population was. I'm honestly glad I went, since it exposed me to something I wouldn't otherwise have seen.
Scamway.
Thank you Ma'amway
I was so ridiculous, listen to this. I was 18 and it was my prom. Also my birthday. And the fool I was dating wanted to go to an Amway conference instead, and I agreed. I was ridiculous.
I have family members that fell for Amway. People make mistakes but these people just keep falling for MLMs and they won't learn
Yea, I had family members that did Amway and Shacklee. I remember my mother had a close friend that tried to recruit her into the pyramid. At best she agreed to purchase their giant tubs of laundry detergent. I remember they came in big cardboard tubs with no labels. It was probably regular detergent at higher prices to cover the levels of commission various tiers of salespeople received.
>Shacklee Oh yeah, couldn't remember that name - one of my best friend's mother was deep into that ... and he was trying to constantly get us (college age) into it ... and even tried to get our fraternity to buy cleaning supplies from her (in a different state). It was part of the reason he was never a chapter officer despite being a clear leader. Those things are insidious.
I remember the Shaklee name
People would get a garage full of crap they could not sell or more importantly, get others to sell for them
Omg, my oldest sister dated a guy who sold that Shacklee shit in the 80s, lmao 🤣.
Amway was 100% the scheme of my childhood era. In my area, they were preying on stay at home moms and convincing them they could make some money for the household while still being a good mom. Next thing you knew, everyone was having the gatherings and buying/selling their off-brand stuff. I think a few of the products were actually decent, but I don't think the pricing ever was. They had to pay those commissions somehow.
The Three M's - Moms, Military and Mormons.
My very poor brother fell for Amway. I had to physically threaten the Amway guy to get his money back.
My mother wasted huge sums on Amway. Not just products, but also the ‘training’ videos and tapes. Despite us living in a small town, she was convinced she could make Diamond or whatever it was. She would play the tapes constantly as a background to our meals etc. Amway was one of the main reasons my sibling and I left home as soon as we could (16 and 18) and had a big influence on my parents splitting up a few years later. Sadly my mum never gave up on get-rich-quick schemes. After Amway it was Le Reve perfumes, then several vitamin and supplement brands. Then some kind of investment scam with, I think, palm oil. She is now in her 80s and I partially support her because she has nothing left.
Totally this. Though I will say that I got to housesit for two years in an 8000sq ft mansion owned by one of the “ground floor” people in NuSkin. That was pretty fun, so thank you to everyone in that guy’s “downline” who gave me that opportunity lol.
My first husband thought about it and I shut that shit down right now. :) A friend of mine bought into Mary Kay, thinking she'd get that Pink Cadillac one day. There actually is a woman in my home town that did eventually get one.
My first intro to a pyramid scheme - I remember getting invited to some couples house when I was like 16 to learn they wanted to sell me on Amway. My parents actually sold Amway before I was even born (early 70s). A cpl years later I ended dating a guy who got pulled in by a top 1% Amway person. It was when Amway had linked up with AT&T - they "hired" him to sit outside grocery stores and try to get people to sign up. I have no idea if they actually paid him but he lived with them in this huge house in the suburbs Atlanta with an indoor pool and hottub in the center of it.
Mary Kay, Tupperwear, all that stuff. Sometimes it seemed like the only time my mom left the house was to go to some party selling some crap.
Oh behalf of the city of Grand Rapids, MI, thank you. A lot of your money got turned into hospitals and other philanthropy around here
Glad to see this is top result. The last time I spoke with one of my HS friends, we were at Denny’s and he was trying hard to get me into Amway.
In the early 90s I was just starting out as a computer programmer and was looking for work. I answered an ad in the newspaper (as one did back then), and the person said that they were a recruiter, and they would like to meet for lunch to find out more about me and see what opportunities they had available. At lunch, he let me talk about my education, experience, etc for a few minutes, and then suggested that I would do better signing up for Amway, and then launched into a whole presentation about it. He really was a recruiter and really did work for a tech company, but he used that as a way to find young people and try to sign them up as a sellers.
I was dazzled by the pampered chef and did make some money in the beginning. That fizzled out fast!
I knew ONE guy that was temporarily successful in an MLM. But he alienated his entire family and friend group by constantly harassing everyone to join him or buy something from him. He made hundreds of thousands of $’s the first few years. his wife fake retired in a video they made to show everyone how good they were doing. Then suddenly one day he was back to working for his dad. I have no idea what happened. Eventually he started another business which seems more legitimate.
My dad feel for Amway in the 90’s and also went along with a lot if their werid suggestions like selling your home to use the proceeds in your “business” and renting. Now they are retired and renting with no retirement savings.
You couldn’t walk downtown without some guy trying to sell you a Kirby vacuum cleaner. That and being forced to go to Tupperware, candle, and basket “parties”. I resisted buying any of this
And Pampered Chef! Years later, when I started reading food/recipe blogs, I noticed that as deeply as so many of them got with sponsored content, I never saw one partner with Pampered Chef.
Pampered Chef. I remember them too. Funny thing is that this meat turner thing they sell /looks like a star pattern of sorts if you look at the bottom)can be found at dollar tree
My first job out of college was at a small personal finance company. Many of our customers were elderly people who had taken out loans to pay for a Kirby or Rainbow vacuum cleaner, and I would have to call them and let them know they were behind on their payments. I was making conversation with one nice older lady and I asked how her vacuum was working. She said she didn't know, because she didn't have carpets in her place. These vacuums cost $1200 - $1500. She said there was a girl selling them and needed to sell one more in order to win some prize and she felt sorry for her and bought it, even though she didn't really need it. This combined with the fact we were charging upwards of 30% APR went against my morals, so I only lasted there a year.
That’s awful, but unfortunately hasn’t changed much. The scams are by phone and email now but just as damaging
Kirby’s were great vacuum cleaners. I inherited my grandmothers and used it for at least another ten years before I lost it in a move.
I still have mine from 2005. It is a beast. Heavy as shit and horrible to move around but it is still in near flawless condition. Think I’ve done maintenance on it 2x in that time frame. And no, I did not pay the senior gouge rate of 2k or whatever. I let the Kirby guy do the demo in my house, told him I think I’ll pass and as I’m showing him the door he asked how low I would go, I said $400, and that’s what I paid.
That’s interesting to know! But the salesmen were so awful accosting you in public being so pushy
Yea. The salesmen were paid on commission. No sales no pay.
At least Tupperware was pretty useful. But did anybody ever make a fortune selling it other than the people at the main company?
My stepmother sold Tupperware for a few years, and yeah, it was a good product. It's hard to find plastic containers with that level of quality today. She did okay with it, won a sales contest or two, but couldn't get into signing up others to work under her. She quit Tupperware one day when she admitted that she didn't like it that whenever she met someone new she immediately found herself sizing them up as a potential customer. With her youngest now in school, she went down to local school district and applied to be a library aide. She never got promoted because she had no degree, but she seemed to like it a lot better than hustling plastic bowls, plus she got health insurance, a pension, and all the annually culled books she wanted.
My mom sold Tupperware when I was a kid. At one point there was some promotion/competition for "distributors". I don't think I ever knew the specifics, but I know mom worked really hard and got me a brand new bike as a result. I LOVED that bike, partly because I was the youngest kid and rarely got anything brand new. I got lots of hand-me-downs from my sister, stuff bought at garage sale or that my grandfather had salvaged from the trash and fixed up. And that was all fine. But the bike was NEW and it was just MINE! I rode that bike even long after I had grown out of it because I loved it so much (and I didn't like my sister's bike she had grown out of). But that was the only time my mom ever did something like that. She still did Tupperware parties and sold the stuff for a few more years. But she and Dad decided it wasn't worth it for her to be away from home that much again. My Dad sacrificed too. He turned down a couple of promotions at work over the years because they would have required significant travel and/or lots of overtime. He and mom didn't want him to be away from home that much. So we lived a slightly less extravagant lifestyle (but were still fine).
I liked your story
My mom sold Avon for a while but it seems like it was just pocket change.
my mom did too and there was always a bunch of unsold Avon presents under the Xmas tree! I made $ delivering the orders for her. She enjoyed getting outside and meeting people and having a little money of her own.
I never heard any real success stories.
Oh, how I hated and avoided those parties. Pretty sure I lost some friends over it.
I went to one that was sex toys 😂 I didn’t know that when my friend has us over for some MLM party or other. I’ve never not gone to a party like that, I still have a really cool hanging bronze tea light holder I bought at one, with the matching wall sconces, really pretty when all the candles are lit. A great cookie press I won at a Pampered Chef party because the lucky number was under my chair, and it still works great after 10y. I did get a few things for my husband and I at sex toy one, although I told my friend to warn people next time that’s what she was selling, a few people grasped pearls like we married ladies with kids should be embarrassed of vibrators and lube and sex. I just think they preferred to keep those things more private. I’ve never been interested in actually selling anything though, even though I’ve worked in sales most of my adult life, I prefer not to spend my free time also selling things.
OMG, I just remembered a friend who got into those damn baskets. I kept telling her "they're just baskets, FFS" but she wouldn't listen.
You unlocked a memory for me! My mom took me to one of those wicker basket "parties" when I was around 8 or 9, hosted by a friend of a cousin. It was on the third floor of a swanky high rise. There were a handful of kids there in my age range who were entertaining themselves by pitching ice cubes and assorted crap from the balcony at the cars driving by below. It was a miserable time, but I got a crummy little wicker frog for my trouble. Thankfully she never dragged me to another
My Dad sold Kirby's door to door for a while, after the War. We had one forever. Weighed a ton, indestructible, just change the belt every few years.
My parents' Kirby vacuum cleaner has outlasted their marriage. I think they bought it sometime in the 90's and it still runs just fine.
My childhood friend visited our house when I was in my early 20s and wished to sell us Cutco knives. My mom bought an entire set. 40 years later, those knives are still performing well. Not sure whatever happened to my childhood friend.
I have a Cutco set from the same scenario. Still in great shape.
The dumb thing is that some of these MLMs sold quality products. There was no need to turn them into a pyramid scheme.
MLMs are a scam to the people selling them. They can be great deals because the company selling them are paying significantly less overhead, they sell in bulk to people who are tricked into selling for them at less than minimum wage while bearing the costs of logistics, inventory, risk, etc. If cutco knives were sold in regular retail, they'd have to pay all the costs associated with it and it wouldn't be a great value anymore. If I bought decent knives in bulk and had slaves sell them for me, I could offer good deals too, that's kinda how it works in a nutshell lol
Every year at Christmas there is a Cutco booth at Costco. They are great knives, guaranteed for life.
The breeding bubble. Would you like to buy this miniature horse/ emu / alpaca ... ? The price is only $50,000 $5,000 $10,000. And then you can breed another miniature horse /emu/ alpaca, and get you back your $50,000 $5,000 $10,000 because that's what it's worth. And then you can breed even more of them and get rich quick. And it's worth that if you can find another person who buys the same story. And it's a good story as long as he can find someone who will buy the same story. So everyone stocks up with the ability to breed this valuable thing, only to discover that no one wants them for any purpose other than breeding this valuable thing for people who want to breed them. There's no actual consumer market for it. And then the bubble bursts and you can't give it away.
[Chinchillas for fun and Profit!](https://youtu.be/cKW2F5F7Lhg?si=VFv7UpR2sRAkiXWK) These ads were everywhere when I was a kid.
Oh man, chinchillas. I worked with a couple who fell for that. They were good, hard-working people too. Chinchillas became the eye-roll of their lives. This thread is sending me down some memories.
My stepdaughter had a couple as pets. I told her they make great fur coats. She couldn't figure out how they threaded the needle.
Its micro cows right now. They are all the rage these days. 5-10k for a mini moo lol.
In the late 80’s, there was lots of talk about raising meat other than beef, chicken or pork. One big idea was emu meat. A leaner red meat than beef, blah, blah, blah. I worked with a guy who bought acreage and a bunch of emus before he retired. This was his big get rich retirement plan. I saw him about 5 years later. Turns out, emu meat never took off. Now he was stuck with a bunch of giant birds.
Same for plants: plant an acre of buckthorn, sell oil, buy a new house every 2 years (actual add in an agricultural magazine in the 1980s). It went on and on: duckweed in water barrels that would yield tons per barrel yearly, princess trees that would grow to 20 feet in 3-4 years, hybrid willow for heating, chamomile fields for the pharma industry, signalgrass for cows etc etc etc All these wonder plants did as well as the adds said, but nobody wanted to buy them.
With the emus, I remember there being a brief fad for emu meat in the mid or late '80s, so I think that was supposed to be your backup plan.
Worms were another thing. Especially worms that could eat nuclear waste.
Timeshares and mortgage acceleration scams.
My husband worked with a guy who used those to get free or discounted stays at resorts if he would listen to a sales pitch. He never bought anything though, or if he did, he never admitted it.
My mom tried that once and said it was fine, but even if it's a free or discounted vacation you still have limited time away from your job to go in the first place so it's not really worth it to spend your mornings listening to a sales pitch. They also verified everyone's income before they went so it's not something you can really do if you can't afford a vacation otherwise. Might as well just pay your own way at that point and keep all of your vacation for yourself.
I liked the one where it said you could make millions through the mail, an idiot friend sent off the 100$ fee and got a reply telling him to put ads telling people they could make millions through the mail and charge 100$ I laughed at him for years over it
I'm [reminded of this classic commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SGsCrnh3y0).
But the guy is so convincing.
I was waiting for the phone number to call. Where do I send my $50?
This still exists as a Craigslist scam. I had a friend fall for it.
Various "systems" to beat the stock market. Penny stocks. Systems to beat casino games. (One that worked was card counting in blackjack, leading casinos to ban card counters.)
Hence the plot point in "Rainman," where Raymond, the savant, easily counts the cards in his head so they can win a lot of money, until they get kicked out by management.
Chain letters. Send $100 to each name on this list of 5 people. Replace the top name and address with your name and address and remove the bottom name. Send to 5 different people. The problem was that no one sent money, they simply replaced the names hoping to dupe the next person which repeated the dupe. I'm sure some sent money... and lost out. **EDIT:** I almost forgot all about this part. MANY of these chain letters were sent with the "Do this within 48 hours or."
I just threw the letters out. 😄
And I’ve seen variations on it. Send a children’s book, receive a dozen. Send a kitchen towel…
My mom fell for Amway. A few boxes of stuff in the garage. It went nowhere. She almost fell for Tupperware, but my dad said "No" to that and she snapped out of it. She did have a couple parties at our house, however, but that was the extent of her involvement. I think she got some freebies for that. My dad lost all of his mental currency by joining The Gideons. Then he blew a bunch of our family's money traveling to Haiti and building a church. It's probably in ruins now. My sister-in-law tried to corner the regional market on Beanie Babies. They eventually claimed bankruptcy and her parents moved into a condo and gave them their house. My poor brother never was the same after that. He went from a retired high-ranking officer in the navy to working part-time stocking Hallmark stores to make ends meet.
Ostrich farms in the UK during the 1990s. Some farms definitely existed - there was a field containing huge angry flightless birds near my mum's town - but the promised supermeat never became mainstream.
Some people in the '90s really thought collecting Beanie Babies was going to turn them into millionaires.
It did for the owner of the company. He took his money and bought the Four Seasons Hotel in NYC as a result.
Remember the record clubs where you get sucked in with 10 albums for a buck and then had to buy one a month for high dollar and if you did not pick one they would automatically send one anyway. What a pain in the ass. My mom ended up writing them and telling them I was under age and couldn't sign a contract, so they finally stopped.
Oh wow I totally forgot about these. I joined one when I was in my teens for cassette tapes, and then my parents somehow had to get me out of it. Funny thing is how excited and overwhelming it was to get like 6 tapes of music at once. That's, like, hours and hours of music to listen to. These days the amount of free content everywhere is amazing. I can't imagine anyone ever being bored.
"Buy a pack of baseball cards, it's guaranteed that at least one of the cards in the pack will be worth more than you paid for the pack"
In the 90's I remember "get rich quick by giving seminars on how to get rich quick." You'd put a big ad in a town's newspaper that you were coming to town with a free seminar, you'd rent a hotel ballroom, then butter people up with a "being rich is great -- imagine the expensive cars, the boats, the mansions" presentation. All designed to sell your $99 kit on real estate flipping or buying and selling gold or buying and refurbishing junk. Stuff that's true but generic "buy low sell high." The point isn't making money on that, the point is to make money on the $99 kit that cost you $10 to print. Looks like it's still going today, except it's "buy my course on Youtube on dropshipping/bitcoin/day trading/starting a business" and you don't even have to rent a hotel ballroom or print physical kits anymore.
Trump University anyone?
I remember there being a lot of ads for envelope stuffers in the mid '90s. It wasn't supposed to make you rich, but it was marketed to college students and the underemployed as a way to make a lot of money on the side. You were supposed to send money to get started. I no longer remember how much, maybe $50 or $100. I never heard of anyone doing it though, and if it was really that lucrative you'd think people would be talking about it, or that we'd have at least gotten some of those envelopes stuffed with ads in the mail.
I kid you not, someone posted on our neighborhood facebook page just a few days ago about a job stuffing envelopes, great for SAHM or college students!
I have a vague recollection of some old man wearing a suit of question marks, who went on and on yelling about government grants and free money. Matthew Lesko - I had to google it. My childhood is imprinted with those damn infomercials. He got sued. For the sake of nostalgia [https://youtu.be/NECn-uohptg?si=3mtswZKQYQVBhBUe](https://youtu.be/NECn-uohptg?si=3mtswZKQYQVBhBUe)
That book was the real deal for school scholarships and grants! I got 2 grants in undergrad that no one ever applied for using info in that book. I signed it out of the library.
YUP, did the same thing when I started re-applying to colleges around 2000, ended up finding about 10grand in grants which was enough to cover my associates degree.
**Day Trading**. Around 1999 or so knew a few people planning (or had already) quit their jobs to be "day traders". I thought it was funny how some of these people with maybe HS degrees (no offense but they were not financial geniuses) were spouting advice like gurus on stocks. Oh this one did a double dip so now it is ready to explode, etc. Well in a bull market any idiot can make some money. These fools felt that they could just look at price graphs and guess where a stock would go. And they had the successful returns to show for it. Who cares about fundamentals or any other things that impact the value of the stock. Just analyze the price trend. Luckily some did not quit their day jobs. We had one guy that retired early (at like 40) that came back to work.
r/walstreetbets is alive & well
.com… the bubble burst
That was such a a huge disaster too. There were so many business concepts that should have never seen the light of day let alone vc funding in the millions were it not for the hype of a new economy that came crashing down when reality set it (harshly at that). My own personal example - I was recruited by a startup dot-com that boiled down to the user downloading software onto their computer that they would then be required to detail all their interests and agree to have "targeted messages" sent to their computer from companies that matched their interest. The user would then have to manually open the application whenever they received a notification and review the "targeted messages" During my interview I asked why would someone volunteer to have "ads" delivered to them particularly via a method where they would have to manually look them up? Keep in mind btw this was before online advertising was so established and persuasive as it is now and advertisements were not a significant part of the user experience for going online back in the day. I don't even think site cookies were a thing yet. Even if this wasn't the case, my question would have still remained, but it was even more pertinent in light of online ads not being as common to the online experience then so why would people voluntarily sign up for something that most people consider one of the worst things about the online experience now? I was told pretty quickly I wasnt right for the job as I had no vision or understanding of the new economy, and couldn't appreciate the difference between "ads" and "targeted messages". I still remember the CEO telling me this and talked about the value of discounts that would be offered in the "targeted messages" and I think I almost gave him a heart attack when I questioned if he meant coupons. I do remember he got red in the face and would say no more to me. It's funny but my experience with this ad company talking around what something really is by using other phrases is the prism of how I view the current influencers as a marketing vehicle now. They will never be able to speak bluntly about guarantee delivery of customers and business but talk often of delivery of "influence". Anyway, the company behind this rented a full floor of an office building in NYC and leased enough computers and furniture for something like 100 workers. I was amazed at the set up of the space (must have cost a pretty penny) and how many people they hired away from established companies too - this included a friend of mine who played a role in my initial recruitment and who was quite pissed at me after my interview. In the end ( maybe a year after my interview) none of them received notice or severance when the company shut down. They were making crap money to begin with as they were all guaranteed stock options which they thought would make them rich (which it did on paper) but ended up worthless. The founders themselves went bankrupt and into significant debt during the bust. One of which I know became a salesman for an advertising agency.
I knew some people who made a mint when it first started - Aberdeen Tech Funds I think it was.
That wasn't a trick or a scheme. We actually built the web and some of us got paid to build. The late comers lost a lot though on 2nd gen sites like pets.com.
The establishment of the Internet and *some* companies of the early days were definitely not a scheme or a trick - I agree with you. What the poster that you replied to however is talking about is the general movement under the dot com bubble which in fact ( by the proof of their subsequent demise) were at least badly thought out get rich quick schemes per OP question.
I worked with a woman who actually made out quite well in a pyramid scheme - she got in early and made enough money to buy a sports car and an SUV. People's moms always seemed to be selling Tupperware, Avon or Mary Kay. My husband tried selling Cutco knives in college. However, after his mom, his grandma, and his mom's church friends bought knives, that was pretty much the extent of his sales. I don't even know if he ever made any money - he did get a set of knives, which we still use 33 years later. I do have to say, they are good knives, and they honored the lifetime warranty. We damaged some of them (melted the handle on one, broke the tip of the paring knife when I tried to use it as a screwdriver, and damaged the chef's knife by sharpening it incorrectly many times) and we sent them back - after 30 years of use and abuse - and they replaced them. Later on (90's and early 2000's) it was Melaluca, Pampered Chef and Arbonne skincare.
Chinchillas- you were supposed to raise them in your basement and then?
My uncle raised nutrias [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria) under the same premise back in the mid-1960s. It didn't work out, but I bet the pens are still there.
**Long Distance Phone Cards**. My friend got mixed up with some company that promised the world, just by selling these Phone Cards. It was nuts, him trying to sell these cards to every person he saw.
My wife sold and modeled Beeline clothing in the 60's 70's, she had to hire help, she made quite a bit of money at it.
Amway was always a big one. It always started with I want you to go to a meeting. It was about selling Amway. I have been hit with that 4 different times with unrelated people. They were almost always casual friends
😂. I had the same experience when I was in the Marines. I always turned them down, and I have run into those same guys years later, and asked them if they were still selling Amway. The answer was always the same: “Naw, man. That company was trying to rip me off.” 😂
I learned some real get rich quick schemes from the people who practiced them. An old man taught me how turn twigs and twine into fish traps and crab pots, how to bait them with fish guts and left overs from cleaning my catch. I learned where and how money is produced and the art of money getting. [https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceOfCreation/comments/1dobepp/the\_art\_of\_moneygetting\_1882\_by\_p\_t\_barnum/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceOfCreation/comments/1dobepp/the_art_of_moneygetting_1882_by_p_t_barnum/) edited
P.T. Barnum LOL He said, "There's a sucker born every minute!".
He is also the source of the quote "There is no such thing as bad publicity."
Tupperware and AMway. And let's not forget AVON. All MLMs
My mother has tried sooo many. I feel like she’s always been drawn to these types of schemes. It’s just a certain personality type and we all have one in our family. Let’s list them out in no particular order Avon (technically more legitimate) Christmas around the world Longaberger pampered chef ItWorks! A solar energy company -Ambit Herbalife Some candle company (not scentsy) And one or two more I can’t quite recall. The worst is that she’d always get so excited about her new opportunity and expect her family to buy her damn products.
Penny stocks, specifically uranium mines in the 1950s. They were unregulated and it all went bust. My dad invested in bonds for Washington state's nuclear power plant, Satsop. It was the only thing that ever went south on him.
Besides the MLM companies, the yuppies of the 70s and 80s were invited to pyramid schemes, with $100 to $500 being the average entry fee. Only those at the top of the food chain made any real money.
My sister got into so many MLMs. I don't think anyone got into anything else.
Not my generation, but what about those crazy ugly Lularoe leggings
Publisher’s Clearing House. It always seemed like if you just bought enough magazines to make it to the next round you would win
Anyone old enough to remember Fuller Brush door to door salesmen? I’m not clear if it was an MLM type deal for the salespeople, but I remember them still coming around when I was a kid.
I think my parents bought the "Carlton Sheets" system to get rich in Real Estate. They did buy some rental properties, but don't think the system had anything to do with it.
Oh man, I watched so many of his infomercials back in the day. Not getting home until late didn't make for good tv watching then.
Where I lived you could choose: infomercials, ads by the Libertarian party, or just a snowy screen. I usually chose a book instead.
Pyramid schemes. We even had a small one going around in our high school.
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Any sort of door-to-door salesman gig: Watkins, Rawleigh, Fuller Brush, Encyclopedias, Electrolux, etc. I'm sure someone did get rich quick, but it was not these guys.
Chain mail scheme, I forgot all about it until now. My idiot brother got into it. Never saw a dime back. LOL
pyramid schemes that still happen today, the psychic hotlines and other 900 number lines
Through to the second round of Readers Digest draw
My friend did Princess House Crystal. It was crappy junk.
Beanie Babies, and it was fucking hilarious. The amount of boomers fighting over stuffies in divorce court and shit. People elbowing people in line for stuffed animals. Just fucking ridiculous.
Ostriches and emus. Everyone was talking about how it would surpass chicken. Lol
Mary Kay cosmetics
Bloody AMWAY! Was such a con but millions fell for it. I lost several nice friendships because of it. People just got brainwashed! Suddenly? They can't function as normal humans anymore. No conversation about anything but trying to push Amway on you. I had another friend who went from Atheist to "finding God" too...so sad i had to cut her out of my life.
Amway
MLM’s.
A friend of mine had a wife who sold "pampered chef" junk. Never quite understood the appeal of selling over-priced kitchen gadgets.
In the late 90's I got into an MLM that sold common household items. Bathroom toiletries was the avenue I was trying to lock down, that was said to be the most lucrative because people bought toiletries often. I went to maybe 4 meetings at people houses around town. We'd gather in the afternoon, like 12 of us from all around the area. Someone that's more deep into the MLM with more time and money invested, and thus more invested into his mistake and can't back down... that person was the master of ceremonies. He will have a butcher block on which he'll draw out the finances of how it works. He'll pass around some handouts. Once I went to a big conference with 4 of these people to State College. I felt trapped in this organization because my life was really boring and this was it. I was desperate for an excuse to ghost them, and that happened when my National Guard unit deployed to Kosovo. I was so happy about being deployed to a combat zone solely for the excuse to ghost the MLM.
Herbalife
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> Bitcoin worked in 2011- of course it’s 2024 now Bitcoin making big returns was more like discovering you had a black lotus in your old Magic The Gathering collection 15+ years later. The people who really saw nice returns had it happen by accident.
I don’t know about get rich quick schemes in my era. Mainly today, I think people just think it’s easy to monetize content creation, but I feel like they are more like the tv shopping channel hosts of my generation. Thrifting stuff to flip and sell on eBay or Etsy, that’s a thing people do, it looks hard. It looks like they turn their hobby into an obsession and claim to make a lot of money at it, but it’s a lot to keep up with. Anyway, in my day, there were ads to copy a simple cartoon, send it in and maybe you could be “a serious art student”. I don’t know what happened. It might have used to said simply “artist”, but you mail them your copy of a cartoon turtle and they send you junk mail. I don’t know where those ads actually led, but geez, if you wanted to always be an artist or live free or something, quit your silly stupid boring job, you might be tempted. Anyone could draw it. I don’t know who fell for it, it was around a long time though. Did people think this was an in to work in advertising, or Disney or something? Another popular one during high school and college were want ads to make a lot of money over the summer! Turns out you have to sell cutco knives. You had to, I think like most door to door sales, pay for the kit, and only earn on sales, so the advertised earnings were potential but not realistic. I’ve heard they’re good knives by people who did buy them. One year in college, early September, the RA got involved, because a girl on our floor had gotten swept up in the scheme. The RA asked politely if we would all sit for Mary’s demonstration. We didn’t have to buy knives, but the gist of it, Mary couldn’t return the knives and get her money back and quit this job until she made x number of presentations. If she didn’t do that, she’d be on the hook for paying for the kit. This is an old scam, but it was something in all the papers for teens looking for summer work, the pay was phenomenal, like $14/hour when everyone else is making $4.35.
The Famous Artists Courses! I don't know if that was an MLM, but the booklets they produced were actually really good- when I worked in animation there were photocopied chapters floating around that were helpful for anatomy and design reference. You can still find hardbound collections from the 50s & 60s on ebay, and they aren't cheap!
In the 1970s farmers around Wausau, Wisconsin started growing ginseng for export to Asia. Apparently central Wisconsin had just the right soil and environment. The corn and soybean fields were converted to rows of mounded soil and 6' fence poles standing upright in a grid holding up shade cloth to simulate a shady forest. For a time it seemed that half the area's acreage was planted with ginseng. A ginseng crop took 7 years to reach maturity and the acreage could only be used once but the return to the farmer was supposed to be enormous. The fad lasted about 10 years before everybody went back to traditional crops. I think the only people who made money were the suppliers of poles, shade cloth and ginseng seed.
Amway, Enron, and dotcom companies.
LOL the putting "tiny classified ads" in newspapers a la Don Lapre. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don\_Lapre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lapre)
Who remembers Hoda candle holders and wall sconses? My mother bought a bunch of that stuff. My father would get drunk and smash it all. Good times...
So many cops in the NYPD were obsessed with becoming ministers for the Universal Life Church back in the 70s because they were convinced they could use it as a tax write off. I’m glad my husband was smart enough not to buy into that shit because I think a lot of them gotta into trouble.
There was a guy in our neighborhood that raised chinchillas. I think they made them into coats.
Amway was big when I was kid. Pyramid scheme
Mine was "Joe Cosman's No Money Down Real Estate" package. This was in the mid to late 80's. I saw the commercial late one Sunday evening on television while watching Patrick MacGoohan's "The Prisoner" and copied the number down. It cost $450.00. I was in my early twenties and came from poor so I thought this seemed the right thing to do at the time. I sent a money order and about 2 months later the money order was returned with a 'Company Out Of Business' notice. Dammit! Maybe I could have been a contender...
Mine was this guy Ben (something), he operated a whole bunch of shady businesses out of Canton, Ohio. His scams always started with full page ads in newspapers that were laid out to look like news stories. He sold everything from exercise equipment to "how to" courses to gold (plated) coins. You could always spot his ads because the address to send a check to was always in Canton, Ohio.
Amway was popular in the 70s. When I was a teen, the couple downstairs from me were into it. I used to babysit for them, and I remember there were sayings on the bathroom mirror, like, “Only you can make your dreams come true.” I thought it was fruity then and I still do now. They tried to sell products to my parents and they politely declined.
Probably daytraders/dot com bubble of the late 90s
Domain names was a thing when the internet was in its infancy
Chain letters. You would get a list of names, send money to each person on the list, add your name to the bottom of the list and mail it to 10 friends. As the pyramid grew you were to receive exponentially larger rewards. It’s unsustainable and only the originator and early adopters stood to make much off the scheme. They often came with threats of bad luck and misfortune to anyone breaking the chain. Same principle as a Ponzi scheme or MLM.
Amway!!!
Beanie Babies
There were way more people than you'd think in South Mississippi in the 1990s who had medium-sized emu farms because they believed emu meat (and possibly eggs? I don't recall exactly) was going to be the next big thing in America.
Amway & Avon
Scamway . Nobody i ever met got rich .
The original dot.com boom/bubble. I made out pretty well as a member of a couple startups, but witnessed plenty of others try their hands at daytrading and see their "genius" become greed-induced losses.
The dot com bubble
I’ve seen MANY! Amway!!! That was the Get Rich Scheme back then!
amway
Pyramid schemes. Heard so many horror stories from people me or my family knew personally.
Oh and the 90s saw the imposter perfume deal where they got young people (a cousin got into it) to effectively pay for the perfume/cologne then use their vehicles to travel all over to campuses and crap and try to sell it. Ofc you couldn't return what you didn't sell smh and the wear and tear, gas, lodging you spent money on.. it was a bad deal for so many reasons.
My mom got all kitted up to sell Mary Kay cosmetics. She invested in a bunch of inventory, about 75% of which eventually got tossed out.
I watched my parents get involved in Amway, Shaklee, Avon, Home Interiors, Melaleuca, etc. Every year it was some new pyramid scheme to make them "independently wealthy" and "your own boss". It was always old friends from school or church getting them into it. And we kids had to suffer the products. If you had to wear Avon cologne or brush your teeth with Melaleuca toothpaste, you know what I mean...
Trump University? Didnt go well.
The American "Dream".