The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [60]
Never one to aim low, Art had her start by calling Crane & Co., the Massachusetts-based paper company that’s been supplying the Treasury Department since 1879. Other than its seventy-five to twenty-five percent linen and cotton formula, the precise technique Crane uses to create U.S. banknote paper—the most durable in the world—is a closely guarded national secret. When she asked a sales rep if they had anything available to the public that “approximated the wonderful feel and look of their currency paper” the response was a curt and resounding “No.” But there are hundreds of other paper companies in North America. Using false identities, she called in dozens of samples, then tested them with the Dri Mark pen. Weeks of disappointment followed as sample after sample marked black. She grew increasingly exasperated as Art, convinced that a ready-made paper was out there, constantly badgered her to try more companies. “He acted like it was my fault we weren’t finding the paper,” she says, “I wasn’t calling the right companies or looking in the right places.” And then one day, after listening to Art complain once again that she wasn’t producing results, she finally snapped.
“What else do you want me try?” she said as she stood in the kitchen with the pen in her hand. “Maybe these paper towels will work.” She marked the towels viciously. “Nope, black. How about toilet paper? Or wait, here’s a cereal box.” She began running around the room, angrily marking everything she saw. “Aha, here’s a phone book. The same phone book I’ve been using to call fucking paper companies. Haven’t tried this,” she said acidly, and stroked the pen all the way across one of the white pages. That’s when both of their jaws dropped.
The ink marked bright yellow.
They gaped at each other in disbelief, then started marking again and again to make sure it wasn’t some fluke of chemistry. When it came back yellow every time, they realized that the answer to the Dri Mark pen had, after all, been literally in the phone book: directory paper. They did a little victory dance, then Natalie found the name of the printer in the front of the book. She then called the printing house and asked them where they purchased their paper. The name they gave her was Abitibi Consolidated, and Natalie quickly learned on the Internet that Abitibi was the largest producer of newsprint in the world. Based in Montreal, it was an $8-billion-a-year operation, with mills, recycling centers, and offices in more than eighty countries. The company was such a monster that when she called the main office in Canada and asked for some samples of various thicknesses, they all but laughed at her. “Uh, we don’t deal in sheets,” a sales-department representative smugly told her. “We deal in the kinds of quantities if you were, say, a city.” But Natalie was able to get the names of a few printing-house clients in Texas. One of them was only twenty miles away in Arlington. She hurriedly called the printer and requested samples. That’s when they hit the first of many brick walls.
Paper thickness is measured by what’s called “basis weight”—the amount that five hundred sheets weigh, according to standardized types and sizes. United States currency paper has a basis weight of about thirty-five pounds, but the thickest the directory paper came in was twenty-four pounds—far too thin. They called other companies that produced directory paper, but the sizes were all comparably thin.
They were crestfallen, but since Art had already figured out several workable barriers to the Dri Mark ink, they were still very much in business.