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Re: eBay



Cindy at boringlibrarian@yahoo.com has sent you an
article from

 The Onion, America's Finest News Source.

 Everything In Entire World Now Collectible


        KIRKLAND, WA--In this suburb of Seattle, a
 man stops off for bread and milk on his way home
 from work. He's excited about his purchases, but not
 because he's hungry.
        "This is awesome," said Marvin Humboldt, 46,
 lovingly holding his grocery purchases. "I've
 finally got the full run of the Wonder Bread 'NFL
 Legends' bags. And this gallon of 2% milk has a red
 dot on the cap, which means it's a first-run factory
 proof."
        Halfway across the country, in Des Moines,
 IA, 34-year-old Janine Tompkins buys a bucket of
 Dutch Boy interior paint. She's not planning to do
 any home redecorating, though.
        "This is the semi-gloss latex," Tompkins
 said. "Dutch Boy only made 12,500 of these in
 eggshell white this year. This one's definitely
 going straight into the display cabinet."
        According to a report issued Monday by the
 North American Collector's Association, every single
 thing currently being manufactured is officially
 categorized as a collectible.
        "It used to be that only certain particularly
 noteworthy or rare items, like Fantastic Four #1 or
 a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card, were considered
 valuable collector's items. That's no longer the
 case," NACA president Bob Gunther said. "If you have
 any objects of any kind in your home, in your
 garage, or on the floor of your car, don't throw
 them away. They could be worth big money someday. In
 fact, they're probably worth a lot of money right
 now."
        Do you have a Taco Bell "Defeat The Dark
 Side... And Win!" cardboard cup-top playing piece
 from the restaurant's 1999 tie-in sweepstakes for
 Star Wars: Episode I lying around somewhere? Chances
 are you do, because more than 80 million of them
 were made. But don't throw it out: According to the
 March issue of Game-Piece Buyer's Guide, it's worth
 $295.
        What about those free postcards handed out at
 record stores promoting bands nobody's ever heard of
 and who were dropped from their labels weeks after
 their debut releases flopped? They're netting big
 money on eBay. And anything put out before
 1980--whether a toy, a set of flatware, or even an
 unopened roll of toilet paper found in a back
 cupboard of your grandfather's RV--is a bona fide
 antique worth anywhere from $100 to millions.
        "See, normally, things that fall under the
 category of plentiful, undesirable junk would be
 worthless, simply due to the laws of supply and
 demand," said Fred Franks, a Parsippany, NJ, dealer
 specializing in 1970s-era sponges. "But nobody wants
 to sell what they collect, anyway: They just want to
 keep it and hoard it because it's so valuable. So,
 in this business, we're not talking about demand
 anymore, just supply, and lots of it. This has
 caused the value of even mundane, everyday objects
 to go through the roof. See this lint on my jacket
 here? That's at least eight, nine bucks worth of
 lint there. I have Internet quotes to prove it."
        Manufacturers have caught on to the trend,
 releasing mundane products such as cigarettes, beer,
 and snack chips in special collector's "platinum"
 editions at marked-up prices. As collector mania
 spreads, even items like floor polish, paper plates,
 and rubber bands are becoming prohibitively
 expensive for many Americans.
        Rarity, once a prerequisite for an item to
 have collector's value, is no longer relevant. An
 early sign of this shift occurred in the early '90s,
 when Marvel Comics encouraged fans to pre-order
 multiple copies of the much-hyped "Todd McFarlane's
 Spider-Man #1" because of the book's anticipated
 collector's value. The issue sold more copies than
 any comic book in history, but fans still hoarded
 multiple copies in special dust-proof Mylar bags, in
 part because of its unique status as the least rare
 comic book ever.
        "Rarity is nothing. Do you have any idea how
 many Beanie Babies are out there?" asked Barbara
 Mason, editor of Beanie Baby Illustrated. "Let's put
 it this way: There are approximately twice as many
 Scoop The Pelican Beanie Babies on the planet Earth
 than there are actual pelicans. And they're worth
 more, too."
        Age, once the other major determining factor
 in an item's worth, is no longer important, either.
 Items used to only get valuable over long periods of
 time. Not so anymore, says TransUniverse
 Collectibles, makers of the official Star Trek:
 Voyager Officers' Club individually wrapped
 toothpick assortment, which retails for $79.95 and
 is sold directly to collectors.
        "Old? Are you kidding? Everything we sell
 here at TransUniverse goes straight to collectors
 with no middlemen the day we make it, because these
 Trekkie types insist on buying [the items] the first
 day they're out," TransUniverse co-founder Wayne
 Spoerl said. "We don't need to wait for it to become
 a collector's item over time--we just print the
 words 'Collector's Item' right on the package.
 They're valuable because we only make a limited run
 of, say, 500,000. Okay, more, but still."
        With everything on the planet officially
 collectible, collectors have more items to choose
 from than ever. Objects such as plastic twist ties
 from speaker-wire packaging, the tin-foil lining of
 chewing-gum wrappers, and the little rubbery residue
 left in magazines when attachments are removed have
 all jumped sharply in value--and investors see no
 signs of a slowdown.
        "I just sold some guy 3,000 gallons of
 factory runoff from a waste-processing plant in
 central Illinois," said collectibles dealer Gary
 Hammond of Louisville, KY. "The government tried
 unsuccessfully to get the stuff zoned for burial in
 three states, but now it's in this guy's basement in
 a glass case. Why? Because it was banned in three
 states, so now it's collectible. That's the beauty
 of this business--even stuff that absolutely nobody
 wants, somebody wants."



 You can also see this article online:


http://www.theonion.com/onion3710/everything_collectible.html

 Complete contents of this e-mail are (c) Onion Inc.
 All Rights Reserved.



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