Many guys my age or older remember the glory days of card collecting. You wouldn’t have thunk it, but I was big into collecting sports cards when I was in elementary and middle school. It started with baseball, Topps with the chewing gum, and then the gloss Upper Deck cards. My fourth grade teacher, Mr. Perry, a big baseball card collector himself, gave away the special holographic edition cards for good behavior in his class, I was hooked. And is the aspiring young capitalist I and everyone else was, most of my time with the cards was spent checking their value in Beckett Price Guides. Basically you would buy some cards and then you would look up their value in this monthly price guide, and if it was worth something you’d stick it in a hard plastic case to protect it’s value. Baseball cards where like dollar bills, flimsy pieces of paper that held a value, though in a much more volatile market. It was also a gamble. You gambled your allowance, lawn mowing or babysitting money on a sealed pack of cards in hopes that the value in return would be worth much more. I had a small collection compared to most, but it was still a valuable investment. Someday I would cash in my cards to pay for college, or better yet I’d take my small fortune and retire early.
Enter the voice of reason: My mother. Mom always said,
“It’s only worth that much if someone is willing to pay you for it.”
But mom didn’t know what she was talking about. Some brilliant dude was sitting in a room writing down the value of each card and the rest of us agreed that’s what it’s worth so that’s what we’d pay for it. Mom didn’t realize that in card country the economy was stable and I could cash in now, or in ten years and my small fortune (which I kept stashed in a shelf in her basement), would bring me into the plush lap of luxury.
Well, I went to the library the other day with a small box of my most valuable cards, the ones in the hard plastic cases. I pulled out the dictionary-like 2007 Baseball price guide and I started looking up my cards. It appears, that without much fanfare or press, the economy of card country has collapsed and gone pretty much bankrupt. And no one thought to tell me.
Mom was right. She’s always right. And her wisdom stretches far beyond baseball cards:
“It’s only worth that much if someone is willing to pay you for it.” (and if your actually going to sell it)
It’s funny though, that we don’t stop this capitalist-ascribing-of-worth mentality once we stop collecting baseball cards. Adults still do it with everything. We talk about how much our TV or bike, coin collection or painting, coffee table or chair is worth, even when we have no intention of ever selling it. And not only do we spend our energy ascribing value to things based on their supposed monetary worth, but we love talking about how much we saved in our acquisition of said item. “I got this painting at a flea market for $10 and it’s worth $300.” It doesn’t even matter anymore if the painting is pretty, we let the $ sign dictate it’s value. We eat, sleep and breath capitalism. In a search for a techy gadget, before, during and after the purchase, one of the main subjects that will come up is what a monetary bargain you got, not whether you needed the more expensive one or why you couldn’t share.
Thank you mom for the economics lesson, your right. From now on I’m going to stop talking about the monetary value of items when it is completely unnecessary in conversation. Instead, I’m going to start valuing things based on their function in society and the good the contribute to the world.
My laptop still has value, but that’s because it allows me to blog, stay in touch with family, earn a side income, pay my bills, and more, not because I got a great bargain on it. My bike is also a valuable resource, but not because of how much it’s worth if I sell it (especially since I have no intention of selling it). The guitar in my closet is not worth the sticker price I paid for it, but the good it contributes (which isn’t much, unless you value gathering dust).
What are your big ticket value items? And what high-capitalist-monetary-value items in your house are pretty much worthless?
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I want others to respect my values and morals and to respect how I raise my children as a parent. There are parent’s out there that have warped values and child-rearing practices, and that often demands the intervention of a community and sometimes the law, but most of the time we respect different parenting practices. So here is a brief insight into my hopes of instilling certain values in my children, and then a brief defense of them.
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