Paydirt Gifts • Leander
Paydirt Gifts • Leander
Written by Kara Vaught Friday, 19 September 2008
Petroleum makes possible everything from pacemakers to polyester.
Paydirt Gifts, an internet-based business offering trinkets related to the petroleum industry, pays homage to that black gold.
Cindy and Paul Covert, owners of Paydirt Gifts, have history in the oil industry and a passion for educating people about the origin and uses of oil. Cindy’s father is a retired petroleum engineer, and Paul’s family has owned the royalties to oil reserves for six generations.
“I’ve lived in or been through just about every town in Texas and Oklahoma,” Cindy said. “So I’ve lived one side [of the oil business] and married into the other side.”
Through those connections, the Coverts met the former owner of Paydirt Gifts and purchased the business in 2003, expanding it every year since.
Their catalog includes Christmas ornaments, bookends, jewelry, key chains, dominoes, cookie cutters, T-shirts and glass figurines featuring oil derricks, pump jacks and drill bits.
There are also oil field board games, a pump jack trailer hitch, and animated oil derricks and pump jacks, which are their most popular item.
The business is unique; the only direct competition the Coverts knew of closed. Oil museums sell some similar merchandise, but at least a portion of it is bought wholesale from Paydirt.
Many items the Coverts sell are made exclusively for them, including the hand-blown glass oil derrick Christmas ornament and the handmade solar-powered, animated desktop pump jacks and oil derricks.
With every order, the Coverts include the Oil Activity Book, a coloring and puzzle book filled with information about the oil and gas industry.
“We want to promote oil education,” Cindy said. “That’s a big deal for us. There are so many people who don’t know where oil comes from.”
When Carol Keeton Strayhorn was Railroad Commissioner, Cindy joined the initiative to educate schoolchildren about the role of that office.
“I went into an elementary school to do a presentation, and I had a table full of all kinds of stuff: cell phones, car parts, Beanie Babies, nail polish, makeup. I asked [the students] which of those things was petroleum based. They just stared at me. I said, ‘All of it.’ I even had an elementary school teacher tell me she didn’t know oil was natural. That’s scary to me,” Cindy said.
For his part, Paul is involved in the National Association of Royalty Owners and volunteers to help those who own royalties understand the business.
“A royalty owner is what you become after oil or gas is found on your property,” Paul said. “Before that, you are a mineral owner — if you own the minerals under your property. In Texas, there is a surface estate and a mineral estate, and they can be separated. If you own your land and the right to the minerals underneath it, you have the potential to be a royalty owner.”
Products with a petroleum component
- Artificial limbs
- Balloons
- Bandages
- Candles
- Computers
- Contact lenses
- Crayons
- Credit cards
- Dishwashing liquids
- Disposable diapers
- Eye glasses
- Flooring (linoleum, tiles, carpets)
- Furniture
- Helmets
- Heart valves
- Lotion
- Panty hose
- Pens
- Perfume
- Safety glass
- Shampoo
- Synthetic fabric
- Tape
- Telephones
- Toys
- Tires
- Toothbrushes
- Waterproof materials
Paydirt Gifts, 528-9389, www.paydirtgifts.com
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