jjeffrey said

Nova Scotia Antiques&Collectibles - Fred Baines - A Wonderful Resource!g

Incredibly, I’ve seen no mention on Steepster of Fred Baines in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia (Canada) and his eBay store “Nova Scotia Antiques&Collectibles”. Fred is an obliging and congenial soul who deals in bric-a-brac and FINE LOOSE TEAS. His prices will seem unbelievably cheap to those who are accustomed to Teavana, Tealux, David’s et al. He offers quite a nice variety of teas, but without the overwhelming emphasis on oddball “flavoured” teas that seems to characterise most tea stores these days. Mind you he has a few flavours, but mostly it’s traditional blends plus a few nicely selected estate teas. Almost all Fred’s teas are available in 1 oz sample, 125g, 250g and 500g packages — and the 500g size are nitrogen-flushed vacuum packs that will keep for decades unoopened. Except for a few “special” teas, the 500g size is priced usually at US$19.95 only — and these are the SAME teas sold by David’s and a couple other stores at grossly inflated prices. Fred told me, “I get my teas from Metropolitan Tea out of Toronto. David’s, The Tea Emporium, Teaopia etc get their teas at the same place.” As if this weren’t good enough, Fred sometimes puts a flock of his teas on sale for a few days — and “sale” in this case means a whopping 25% off the regular price!

I have no connexion with Fred except as a very happy and satisfied customer. I find his communication excellent, his shipping fast — and oh yes, if you order $80 worth of tea at once he will absorb the shipping cost! He just says that he finds a happy customer is a repeat customer, and he’s absolutely right about that.

I know when I was feeling my way into becoming a loose tea aficionado, I got pretty discouraged by the prices from David’s, Teavana and the rest, because I’m retired and don’t have much money. Two sources enabled me to turn my back on the up-market suppliers: Fred, and Bulk Barn, which has a small selection bulk teas that are of good quality and very affordable.

People who are just getting into loose teas need to find out about sources of this kind! I mean, why waste money buying tea at $7.50/50g — which is equivalent to $75 for 500g — when you can get excellent teas at less than a third the price from a private-seller with an eBay store?

I hope this post will same some other newbies a lot of frustration. If anyone’s really interested I wouldn’t mind posting a list of what’s available; Fred doesn’t stock six jillion varieties, but his basic selection is very astute, I think.

1 Reply
Sil select said

Thanks for sharing :) always nice to hear about new places!

Login or sign up to post a message.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.