Do you know what’s better than opening a mailed letter? Opening a mailed letter with two real letters of the alphabet to go along with it. After receiving just such a package from Bay City Cargo, which specializes in both vintage and new movie theater marquee letters, we knew we had to dig deeper.

Mike Hurley started the Belfast, Maine-based company two years ago after he switched out the old changeable marquee letters at his two movie theaters for modern flat ones. “We put the old letters on eBay and they were HOT!” Hurley remembers with excitement. “As a serial entrepreneur, I was off and running.”

Now Bay City Cargo has two other employees (Rick Young, “master of all,” and Marjie Byers, “officeinista”) and helps individual customers and commercial clients alike find the letters they need. The most common requests are for initials or family names—the company even supplied “FERGIE” for a recent Avon commercial.

So where does Hurley find his supply? Anywhere and everywhere. “We pulled 1,500 letters out of the bottom of a closed drive-in movie theater screen that was buried in 1 inch of pigeon poop. It took us months to wash them, and they still have a faint scent of je ne sais quoi.” Now that’s what we call entrepreneurial spirit.