Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:10:09 -0500
Reply-To: Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Subject: Re: Loaf Westy on ebay w/36K for $11K and rising: List bias
observation
In-Reply-To: <71d9cdf90606251312g8c86921ibe2ec46a2410c568@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
The comment was, and is, that if a car becomes a classic car, which I
think any van manufactured by VW will, even the Eurovan (though at
the low end of the scale) the more original they are kept the more
valuable they will eventually become. What some moron with way too
much money wants to do about that situation is the business of that
moron. There isn't a love-meter on ebay, just a money counter, though
good things and good cars alike come to people who love them. Ask me
how I know!
Right now, an old acquaintance is considering giving me his 64
splittie to fix up because he's seen what a good home my Vanagons
have. And the diesel Westy I'm driving came to me when the PO died
and his family knew how much I loved my 90 Carat. Love does count for
something, just not with everyone, and not with wealthy collectors
able to drive up the price of everything and anything and certainly
not at auction.
Anyway, your extrapolation off my topic was very well done, David,
and no offense is taken. I'm glad to serve as an ad hoc symbol of
anything if it helps gel your thoughts! : ) You've made me hungry
for cake. And wine!
Best,
Jim
On Jun 25, 2006, at 3:12 PM, Jake de Villiers wrote:
> Bravo! Well said David.
>
> On 6/24/06, David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> At 10:55 PM 6/23/2006 -0500, Jim Felder wrote:
>> >There are a good many aspersions cast on this list at folks who
>> value
>> >original condition over "improvement" modifications. I ask them:
>> >Which is worth more, a 1957 Jaguar with with the original engine, or
>> >with a much better Chevy V8? An MGA with a 1500 CC original engine,
>> >or an 1800 MGB replacement? In the short term, the so-called
>> >improvements work well and are desirable. In the long term, they are
>> >detrimental to value.
>>
>> Jim, value isn't always measured in dollars. Some folks prefer to
>> have the cake; others to eat it. Neither one is wrong, but
>> collectors as a class don't seem to quite understand that it's *they*
>> who are eccentric, not the users. Actually in a very real sense
>> they're perverse: they pay great sums for perfect slices of extremely
>> old cake, specifically for the purpose of not eating it. A few years
>> ago one of them paid the price of eleven of those $11k Loaf Westys
>> for a bottle of wine that Thomas Jefferson neglected to drink (In the
>> excitement of the coup the new owner held a party for the bottle of
>> wine during which he dropped it on the floor -- so by historical
>> accident it is known without the slightest question that the wine had
>> ceased being wine many years previously and was now only making the
>> bottle dirty. And the collector had enough detachment and presumably
>> enough spare cash to see some humor and irony in the situation a few
>> days later, good on him I say).
>>
>> But the only thing that made this perfectly good bottle worth a
>> bidding war to collectors was that nobody had gotten any actual use
>> out of the originally valuable wine it contained. Thermodynamically
>> that's a bit odd, and I'm sure I'm not the only engineering type who
>> thinks so. Likewise, the notion that a valuable and beautiful piece
>> of antique furniture only retains its value if it remains ugly and
>> worn-out is, um, perverse, and dishonors the memory of the original
>> craftsman who built it to be *used* and who also dressed it in beauty
>> to be enjoyed in the solid present and maintained in good order for
>> the future -- not neglected to become ramshackle and then cherished
>> at huge expense as a symbol to focus the worship of its own former
>> splendor. Eeuuugghhh...it makes my teeth itch.
>>
>> The core of this sort of collectorship is self-denial and a sort of
>> asceticism in the heart of the collector and in a rarefied way I'm
>> sure it's a Good Thing. It's certainly a Magnificent Thing, though
>> equally certainly it's Not War. And without the slightest cavil,
>> this great country has long stood for the unquestioned right of every
>> man to go to Hell in his own particular handbasket. But a whiff of
>> the pit hangs over the whole thing for me because I don't see it
>> widely acknowledged that only the rich can afford to turn economics
>> upside down for the purpose of their game, and only rich nations can
>> afford to have many Collectors about the place (Historically I think
>> it's often been limited to the guy in the palace and a few of his
>> buddies, and written off as a Cost of Government). And no corporeal
>> being can afford to apply this inverted economics across the board
>> precisely because it *is* perverse. King Midas was a Collector....
>>
>> There's nothing wrong with playing the game, but I think there's a
>> lot wrong with keeping a straight face about it in public. Decadent
>> games, even such gently decadent ones as this are a subtle and
>> acquired taste, and letting babes and innocents and non-rich play
>> without clearly Informed Consent bothers me. Also, I fear that in
>> their innocent but well-financed pursuit of the ineffable collectors
>> sometimes tempt others to a Faustian bargain, perhaps even
>> knowingly. Rich men have long used their pocket change and petty
>> cash to pry at poor men's souls and squeeze them like toothpaste; and
>> cynically pretended that these were transactions of economics when in
>> fact they were very close to raw force. For some reason I'm reminded
>> that from the bank's standpoint, the fellow using the ATM with a gun
>> pointed at his head has just made an *authorized withdrawal* and is
>> expected [collectively] therefore to shoulder alone the social costs
>> of a system where he can be taken any of dozens of nearby places and
>> used as a kind of human lock-picking tool to steal his own
>> money. The bank didn't, after all, force him to accept an ATM card,
>> and it has its profits to look after.
>>
>> Perhaps it's I who am the innocent -- perhaps the culture Has It All
>> In Hand and I should stop fretting. I keep looking for a bit of wink
>> wink, nudge nudge -- and not finding it. Scares me a bit.
>>
>> Jim, sorry for unloading this on you -- it's twenty years of stuff I
>> didn't know I'd been thinking coherently about until the words
>> floated up just now. Will you retroactively accept this temporary
>> post as ad hoc Symbol of Evil Personified long enough to give these
>> ideas a little air, and not allow anything I've said to sting you
>> personally? You'd have my gratitude and surely be entitled to the
>> Official Foil Cloak...l
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> david
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/
>> Vanagon/
>> '84 Westy "Dutiful Passage," '85 GL "Poor Relation"
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Jake
> 1984 Vanagon GL
> 1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie"
> www.crescentbeachguitar.com
>
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