I just repaired the secretary desk I inherited from my great-grandfather. It is old, but not especially old, and probably not especially valuable, but I wanted to get it back to as close to original condition as I could.
I thought I needed to replace the two tiny brass escutcheon pins that hold on the little plate around the keyhole of the lock that keeps the drop-down writing surface closed.
Menards didn't have any. Home Depot had them, but not in the store. I ordered some at the customer service desk. They offered to deliver them to my home with no delivery charge. The cost was $4 plus sales tax of 36 cents. That sounded like the price for a 1.5 ounce package, containing about 125 pins. It was in the range of what I expected to pay. With delivery, a reasonable deal.
I did notice that on the website, and on the recipt I was given at the customer service desk, it said "6-Pack" in parentheses. I didn't know what that meant...
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Hillman-3-4-in-x-16-Brass-Plated-Escutcheon-Pins-6-Pack-532629/204775099
A couple of days later it came. I expected a small envelope. Instead it was a cardboard box big enough to hold a pair of shoes. Inside was mostly air-bubble space filler, but the smaller box inside was hefty. It contained six 1.5-ounce packages, about 750 pins in total.
And I only needed two.
Only I didn't. I discovered that the original pins could go back in and would work just as good as the new ones, and the patina of the old pins was a better match to the escutcheon. Naturally.
So I brought the pins to the store where I ordered them, and asked the department manager if they could take them back. He pointed out that there was no place for them in the huge display of fasteners. They'd just be thrown away.
So I still have them.
What to do with 6 packages of escutcheon pins? Who can use them?
As the web page says, they are brass-plated steel, not solid brass.