Comment on Internet picture of a monkey
Flocklesscrow@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Ah, how quickly they forget how Boomers went feral over Beanie Babies.
And timeshares. And pyramid schemes.
I remember my parents doing one of those weird chain letter things where you’d copy the letter to a few other people, send a few quid to the people on the list, and within weeks you’d be sent thousands of pounds, if only the scheme didn’t require more people than there were in the whole country.
And the stock market, and the housing market. Boomers did actually ride a huge wave of capital appreciation.
They’re talking about scams, so the things the dumb boomers dumped their cash on tonot get a 3x return on investment for the low low cost of being the luckiest and worst generation in history.
And Reaganism.
Pet rocks.
And every ridiculous “must have” Christmas toy craze.
Nowadays people spend their money on sensible crazes, like Stanley Mugs.
Years ago, the Ticket Me Elmo dolls were the hot Christmas gift, and nobody could find them. I happened to walk into Target, and they had just set up a new display of their newly arrived shipment. I bought 10 them for about $30 each, and sold most of them for $150-200. The final one finally went for about $80 just before Christmas.
Paid for ALL our Christmas gifts.
It’s not ok to be a scalper just because it’s kid’s toys instead of geforce cards.
Do you intend to sell your house for what you bought it for? If you make a profit on your house, are you a scalper?
Tell it to Wall Street. Supply and Demand, it’s what our entire economic system is based on.
Why is it not okay to be a scalper? What do you mean by “not ok”, should it be frowned upon by others (like pooping your pants) or do you mean morally wrong (like a sin) or a crime?
Hear me out before you downvote a devils advocate opinion…I think all the downvotes on this comment are from concert ticket buyers, GPU buyers, Christmas fad toy buyers, and other victims of duopolies or false scarcity in the market (effectively monopolies?). Its not the “scalper” that is continuing to fuel the broken system, it is the corporations who promote false scarcity.
I get the anti-scalper sentiment, but I don’t think BarneyPiccolo should be downvoted for making a few bucks on Elmo. It’s a case of hating the player and not the game. In this case they are not an arm of corporate interests buying up needed resources and holding them hostage, they are a victim in an unfair game that promotes scalping. This would be a different scenario if they were buying up necessities like toilet paper (shitty reference here), local affordable housing, or agricultural land.
Ticket Me Elmo
Is that the cop version?
No, it’s the poor spell check version
In defense of pet rocks: the highest they were ever sold for was the modern equivalent of $24 and nobody was pretending they were worth more.
Nowadays people spend their money on sensible crazes, like Stanley Mugs.
AKA “Big Dumb Cups”
Lmao apparently people still think they’re worth money. My 18 yo stepson said the other day how his mom could sell her beanie babies for “a lot of money!” We both just laughed. He thinks his mas produced Funko pops are gonna be worth a fortune one day too
Theoretically, it is possible that 70 years down the line it might actually be worth something, assuming it is still new in box, undamaged, and it is of something that is still culturally relevant.
But the chances are so slim as to make it a worse gamble than the stock market.
Rarity is a huge factor for stuff like that. If everyone keeps theirs pristine because they know it’ll be worth something it won’t be rare and it’ll be worthless. Collectibles that are worth the most are things that people didn’t value as much at first and used them normally. They got worn and broken and discarded so it’s very rare to find one in good condition.
People keep Beanie Babies and Funko pops in boxes so they’ll never be worth anything because there are so many good quality ones.
To an extent I agree with you. The “problem” comes when people slowly start to realize that and open them or throw them out. At which point the items actually can become worth something. Though again, unlikely.
Part of the problem with most collectibles “meant” to be “worth something eventually”, are packaged in such a way that they are “enjoyable” in the packaging. You can put a sealed Funko or Beanie Baby on a shelf and you’re looking at the item itself. There’s no reason to open them.
If you truly want a “collectible”, purchase something like a game console and keep it in its box for fifty years.
After watching many, many episodes of antiques roadshow, I’ve come to a conclusion about what kinds of things appreciate and become investments and what things are worthless.
Anything marketed and sold as a “collectible” is worthless after the fad has died down. People will hang on to them despite the bubble popping, in some sort of hope they’ll be valuable again someday. This guarantees they won’t become valuable because so many people have large collections and preserve them well.
The things that are actually valuable after 30+ years all have two things in common.
The things that become investments are exactly the things no one thought about collecting, but that were ubiquitous and loved enough to engender some kind of nostalgia or significance to a large group of collectors. If the demographics of the bulk of the collectors are in the 1% for some reason, then the values can get truly astronomical. But these also fluctuate in value as these rare items come into fashion to collect (or fall out of fashion). The more ephemeral or fragile in nature an item is, the more rare it is to survive for lengths of time and therefore the more value it could potentially have… things like cardboard toys from the 1920s can be incredibly valuable if they’re in great condition. Those were the cheapest toys and likely considered somewhat disposable back then. No one really valued them at the time, so very few were preserved.
All that said, anything lots of people keep as mint as possible in their boxes will likely never be as valuable as when they were initially sold as new. Especially if “collectible” was a key marketing point for it.
I don’t know if this applies to funkos, but I recently learned that anime figurines will get sticky if boxed for too long, something plasticizer evaporating and having nowhere to escape to it sticks to the figurine and makes it kinda gooey and shiny, so I don’t know if you could have it “undamaged” in its box after so long.
friendlymessage@feddit.org 1 month ago
Not really the same, I mean, Beanie Babies actually physically exist and require work to be produced
CheezyWeezle@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No prior equivalent? NFTs are basically just an evolution of fraudulent bonds and fake stocks, which people have been falling for for literally centuries.
AppleTea@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
also, tf2 hats
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I have a derby! It’s worth a billion dollars
nexguy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A beanie baby did exist yet provably cost $1 to make and sold for hundreds…pretty valid comparison.
cujo255@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
But can you click ‘save as’ on a beanie and have an identical copy for free?
nexguy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You can have a duplicate made for a few bucks. Not free but when the difference is $1 to $1000 or $0 to $1000, no one wants your beanie baby just as much as no one wants your nft monkey picture.
Both can be authenticated to say you own the only blockchain backed copy of an nft or a rare beanie baby. Almost no one cares about either.
JillyB@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Just because beanie babies exist in the real world doesn’t make them valuable. The NFT bubble was similar to the beanie babies bubble.