East Coast American heroin, now almost entirely Columbian, is packaged for the retail market in glassine envelopes (almost always excepting Florida). These glassines are sold as indivudal bags containing roughly 100mgs.of powder and are sold either for 10 dolalrs or 5 doallrs in the NE with the price increasing south of Baltimore.
"Bundle" is slang for a package of 10 of these bags. Some locales add a number of bags to the 10, but I will explain about that in just a moment.
Glassine are manufactured primarily for the stampcollecting trade. Heroin dealers in NYC began using them in the late 1960s when each bag sold for between 1 and 5 dollars, with a greater quantity per greater price. Logoing of these bags with simply using colored adhesive tape, a custom that persisted well into the 80s on NYC's Lower East Side.
The first dealer to use rubber stamps to brand name his product was the infamous leader of the Country Boys Gang, a man I wrote about at length a couple of years agoi for a feature the mods thought about adding, "Drug Porn."
This man had his operation on the West Side of Harlem and as a selling point began stamping his bags "Blue Magic" after a popular R and B group of the era. The name connotated popularity and proved to be a very smart move as buyers began lining up in droves, something that had never happened. Selling for only 30minuees every afternoon between NYPD shift changes the brand would completely sell out at all his spots.
Other dealers copied the move and here we are today. Between then and now though, hos bags are stamped has changed. Up until themid 90s bags would be stamped by retail dealers themselves. Unless they chose to open another distribution spot, that stamp could not be sold without fear of violent retribution.
When then Mayor Guiliani iniated his Quality of Life campaign in 1997 things changed. Street dealing in NYC went underground so that almost all heroin is now sold through dealers who are lucky to seel at most 100 bags a day, something some spots would sell in mere minutes prior to that.
As a result, wholesale distributors now had noo kilogram sales and needed a way to boost their profit margin. Using common sense they began bagging their product themselves and stamping before distributing to street dealers. Now one can easily find the same stamp in many, many places with no idea of who "owns" it.
The era of "Boy George and Country Frank died."
Prior to 97, NYC was the distribution hub for virtually all wholesale heroin on the East Coast. The minute a dealer left the city the price of a 10 dollar bag shot up to 15 for northern New Jersey and Long Island's Nassau County. East of Nassau or north of the NY/Jersey line, or south of Elizabeth NJ the price incresed to 20 and then exponentially as you progressed further away.
At this time all bundles were 10 bags. Post 1997 though, things changed. the shake up in dsitribution caused prices to drop, purity to ris, and people to use their own systems depending on locale.
A good example of this is the concept of the "Brick." A brick in NYC is 10 bundles for a total of 100 bags. Just over the river in NJ though it is 5 bundles, and so on. Once this began, then bundles changed in scope as well.
One should also add that bundles involving pricing as well. A bundle should never cost more than 70 for 10 dollar bags or 35 for 5 dollar bags, although last time I was in NYC more than a year ago there no more 5 dollar bags.
An NYC brick shoould go for 650, an NJ brick for 300 to 350 depending on connections. Of course, for high volume customers, such as those who regularly buty mre than 10,000 bags the price is much lower, etc.
Hope it helps.
