>Boy who bought Harry Potter book with pocket money sells it for eye-watering sum
>A lifelong Hogwarts enthusiast has pocketed a whopping £56,000 from the sale of his Harry Potter book which he originally purchased for just £10.99 with his pocket money at age 10, after it was revealed to be a coveted first edition.
Fine, if you are in a position to piss £56K up the wall by buying essentially a misprint of a second-rate children's novel, then you probably aren't starving.
But I hate the fact that something like this is treated as an investment and not just an oddity. And surely the buyer is likely not somebody realising their childhood dream by owning a first edition, but somebody who wants to see their investment appreciate, until the day that they can sell it to a like minded cunt for 100 grand. And the cycle goes on.
I'm not Marxistlad, but this is a part of capitalism that can just get fucked, IMO. It just reinforces the idea that everything has a price tag and is an investment opportunity. When many things really shouldn't be.
You might as well be. You are setting foot down that path. As soon as you have made the conscious decision that no, some things should not be a profit making enterprise at the whims of the free market, you are on that course, it's only a matter of where you will draw the line.
Standing across from you is a an Ayn Rand worshipping libertarian ghoul, who wants to tug that line the opposite way- The fact that you think oxygen is a commodity we should all freely have the right to breathe is, to him, outright Stalinist totalitarianism, interfering with the essential moral righteousness of the market.
So where is the line? First edition books? Rare vinyl records? Original works of art? An 18 year old's pictures of her twat? Housing? Water?
>>42570 I’m not him, but to me the most offensive thing is how the story is being reported. It’s not about a rare book, or a culturally relevant book, but merely about a book with a big price tag. The book is a MacGuffin; the story is about the price. It’s kind of like how those news channels you only ever watch on hotel TV, like the Bloomberg channel, report news stories entirely through the prism of share prices and value and ROI and M&A. Al-Jazeera would say, “Israel and Iran agree ceasefire - thousands of lives saved”, and that’s much less pernicious and despicable to me than, “Israel and Iran agree ceasefire - Dow Jones rallies to highest level in two months”. It’s not about news story itself, but rather about the priorities of the person reporting on it.
If it makes you feel any better, I can easily see the investor losing money on this when they discover the market for future Harry Potter nostalgia doesn't live up to expectations.
>A lifelong Hogwarts enthusiast
>now comfortably in his late 30s
I see that 56k will soon be spent on a messy divorce and a new sportscar. How are they allowed to talk about someone like this?
>>42572 I bet if someone offered you 56k for your old Al-Jazeera book that accidentally talked about slavery in the Middle East then your priorities would change too.
>>42574 > your old Al-Jazeera book that accidentally talked about slavery in the Middle East
Someone's got a distinctly American chip crisp? on his shoulder.
>The fact that you think oxygen is a commodity we should all freely have the right to breathe is, to him, outright Stalinist totalitarianism
I remember seeing something on TV about Japanese cities in the 1970s when air pollution was absolutely rife and they had air vending machines in the streets, where you would pop in a few coins, put a mask on your face and then you could breathe a few minutes worth of compressed purified air.
But then Big Industry obviously shat on its own sushi by making ambient air clean and breathable again.
Even financial advisors will argue against investing in bigger fool scams.
A lot of these things aren't even that rare the high price being promoted is often a pump and dump. Someone bought a pristine condition copy of super mario bros off of their mate who was part of the grift for $2 million dollars. There are actually thousands of copies of mario in that condition. But the reporting generated a lot of business for their appraisal business, and gave a sudden spike to the price to the existing copies. You over pay for one thing in a public manor and it causes a spike in demand of people who want a get rich. The fact that you now think it is worth that much is the grift.
Incidentally I own a painting by a mildly famous artist who has fallen out of fashion and largely retired, who has won multiple awards and the painting I bought is unique and was used as a book cover. I bought it for 3 figures directly from his website. I can buy what is essential a masterpiece for 2 orders of magnitude less than a algorithm made picture of a monkey because there is no hype around him I like him but evidently no one else has thought enough to care. People either pay stupid amounts as a belief it is an investment tool (victims of fraud), are committing fraud, or because the fact they spent that much is performative for status (empty inside). No one gives a shit about reading a massive produced book they bought for 50k (it would probably devalue it) it is functionally worthless the value can only be hype, and anyone who traded football cards on the playground. Or owns a beanie baby knows how that ends. The item better be really unique and timelessly popular to not end up being worthless. It would be lovely if the BBC published an obituary for my artist when he died and I was suddenly holding onto a painting I could trade for a house but I doubt it I own it because I like it.
Much of the problem started with the Everything Bubble that occurred between the Financial Crisis and the end of the pandemic. Where interest rates were low to zero, which meant that borrowing money was almost free and at the same time it was difficult to achieve return on investment on the money glut that was in the market. And so you had money flowing into physical assets that weren't normally considered a mere investment (or if they were, it was much more of a niche thing that didn't see the high returns we've had recently) in the hope that they would generate returns through appreciation. Or if you want, through collectibility.
And so, everything has become "collectible". From rare misprints to vintage tech to comic books and 80s synthesizers. Where it gets absurd is when simply using an item in its intended way is going to take hundreds or thousands off its value, for example by simply taking a rare comic book out of its plastic sleeve, by playing a record on an actual record player, or by putting on your vintage trainers and walking around in them. Or by taking action figures out of their box.
Sure, you'll get your return on investment. But you're still a rich cunt who is pricing less fortunate people out of owning any of those things, and you don't deserve them because you're just going to put them in your vault where they'll never see daylight.
>>42596 I wouldn't say it started with the GFC when we've had speculation and collectors for ages. It doesn't seem any more common than what I remember from the past although I could definately believe the US system of economic stimulus leads to more of it in the immediate aftermath.
People are just prone to getting carried away with fantastical promises of money - like trading magic beans or Brexit. I've always dreamed of finding a black back full of cash somewhere and I've done a lot of thought about how I'd manage that without raising any questions from HMRC but very little on how I'd deal with the cartel hitmen.
The underlying mechanisms of greed and naivety that fuel market bubbles are as old as the hills. People have always been suckers for promises of increasing their wealth. I guess that's human nature.
But the Everything Bubble following the Financial Crisis was still unique in that it affected almost all asset classes, and even turned things into asset classes that weren't normally considered one by most people, as I said. Collecting fine Bordeaux wine with a view to profit was just as niche as collecting supercars. But then that idea also spread to more everyday things like trainers and vinyl records and works of popular art. To where you now have investment funds that specifically invest in physical assets like that.
You always have to accept a certain amount of idiocy in the financial world. No matter how often the cycle repeats itself, people are still under the illusion that they'll get in on an asset at a reasonable price and then sell at or near the top of the market to a bigger fool. But as with most boom and bust cycles, you run out of bigger fools eventually, and the biggest fool is then you. It doesn't matter what financial alchemy or sorcery you come up with, somebody eventually always has to foot the bill.
