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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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