Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 06:51:09 -0400
Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: Loaf Westy on ebay w/36K for $11K and rising: List bias
observation
In-Reply-To: <A9C78796-F74C-4FB1-8BE6-3D0CA72D36FA@knology.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
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"
| 
