… for a Sanka ashtray if Luc Sante made up a story about it? Apparently at least a few people would, as Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker found when they launched a project called Significant Objects, where they paired up creative writers with objects bought at garage sales and asked them to make up a story about the objects. Each object is for sale on eBay, where anyone can bid for it. So far, a Candyland labyrinth game bought as a thrift shop for $0.29 — with a story about it written by Matthew Battles — now has a top bid of $9.50. Does that supersonic premium reflect the quality of Battles’s story, the value of participating in an interesting project, or perhaps some new Candyland scarcity? [%comments]
Would You Pay More …
TAGS: ebay, price theory
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Maybe it just reflects the difference in consumer base. (…not that I disagree with the idea that publicity increases the perceived value of an object.
…Didn’t you just artificially inflate demand and mess up their experiment by giving the item special publicity on a popularly viewed website?
I’d probably pay someone $9.50 to take our version of Candyland out of our house so I never have to set foot on that God-foresaken primary-colored path ever again. I might even pay another $9.50 not to hear a story written about it.
How long did it take to write the story? This doesn’t sound like a very attractive business model unless the stories don’t have to be unique for each trinket. I’m not a writer, but I image it would be tough to make a living writing $9 stories.
We’ve known this for years, thanks to Seinfeld’s “J. Peterman” character and his catalog with outlandish tales of his (fictional) adventures.
“I’m not a writer, but I image it would be tough to make a living writing $9 stories.”
Now that newspapers and magazines are imploding, ex-journalists will take anything they can get!
So long as other people accept these fake provinces, I’m all in. After all, what’s the difference between a regular pipe and one used by Einstein?
“My author fried says this chair dates back to Louis IVX and has a rather amusing story relating to how he acquired it.”
“Sounds good to me, let me fetch my checkbook.”
A good tale can do wonders for bidder activity – whether or not they cough up is not always clear. See below for an excellent example of this phenomenon
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=223309871&ed=true