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The story is about a man who stumbles upon some alien tech - I recall a lighter that just produces a flame without any mechanical parts....

He doesn't have the wealth to trade the art for these items so he basically becomes a middle-man.

I recall a quote about him asking himself "How do they manage to get the coffee to taste as good as it smells?" or something along those lines.

All of the trade is also set in those dusty non-specific trinket shops you occasionally walk past and wonder what on earth they do and how comes they haven't been turned into a Costa yet.

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  • Hi there! :) that's already some info, but maybe you could take a look at this guide on how to ask a good story-ID question, see if that triggers any more memories you could edit in? Like when did you read that? Was is part of an anthology? If so, do you remember what the cover looked like, or other stories that were part of the anthology? Things like that, to increase the chances of a succesful ID. Cheers!
    – Jenayah
    Commented Aug 23, 2018 at 13:25
  • The idea sounds a lot like Clifford Simak's "The Big Front Yard", but the details are different.
    – Klaus Æ. Mogensen
    Commented Aug 23, 2018 at 14:23
  • probably the same as scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/223100/… (which is newer but has an accepted answer)
    – Otis
    Commented Nov 17, 2019 at 0:19

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This is Bob Shaw's "A Full Member of the Club".

As you remembered, it ends:

"How on Earth, he wondered idly, do they manage to make it taste exactly the way it smells?"

enter image description here

Thanks to user14111 for the archive.org link.

Also the unaccepted (but correct, IMHO) answer to this slightly older question:Story about alien art smugglers

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  • Wow, a serialized novel and a story by Bob Shaw in the same issue!
    – Organic Marble
    Commented Aug 24, 2018 at 12:51

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