Here’s a very cool story about how things change value over time — and the “trough of no value,” when an object’s perceived intrinsic worth is less than the cost (in space, convenience, money) of retaining it … at which point, people tend to throw it out.
But that trough is usually temporary, as rareness and time-driven-perspective and nostalgia eventually boost those items back up.
My favorite example of the Trough of No Value comes from a former acquaintance whose back room had a high, narrow shelf running all the way around it, about a foot below the ceiling. Arrayed on the shelf were dozens of kids’ lunchboxes from the 1950s and ’60s. He told me that not only are such lunchboxes collectible now, but that they’re actually fairly hard to find. Time was, of course, when most every schoolkid had a little metal lunchbox (poor kids “brown-bagged it”). But the kids grew up, the school lunch program got started, and who wanted to keep old lunchboxes around? They weren’t useful any more. They weren’t worth anything. And, since they were almost all used for their intended purpose, many were damaged or worn by use (I vaguely remember owning one that was rusty and had a dent). People naturally threw them away. The “trough of no value” for lunchboxes was long and harsh. That’s why they’re not so common today as you might guess—because not that many made it through the trough. (By the way, the inset photo is a corner of Allen Woodall’s Lunchbox Museum in Columbus, Georgia.)
Even great treasures can go through a trough of no value, too. Consider that Vincent Van Gogh used to trade finished paintings for new tubes of paint—and the art supplies merchant was doing him a favor because he took pity on him. The paintings were worthless at the time.
Which is why, of course, I never, ever throw anything away …
Actually, I can attest to this from personal anecdote. I’ve been doing a fair amount of work on our years of digital photographs. As I plow through virtual stacks of hundreds of photos, I tend to find I value the old ones — Katherine as a baby or toddler, trips taken long ago, etc. — more than the recent ones. The recent ones are, well, within the bounds of memory, and I tend to keep only the ones that are artistically sound and noteworthy. The older ones, though, show things that are no longer, so that even a less well-crafted photo becomes more valuable in my eye because it’s of something I don’t now see every day.
Which, again, is why I tend not to throw things away. Because I know I will, sooner or later, regret it.
I fear, one of these days, Katherine is going to have quite the job going through boxes of stuff. Will she see the value in the things I’ve ferreted away? Fortunately, it’s not something that’s going to worry me all that much at the time.
(via Stephen)
An then there is our garage. . .
Uncovered anything valuable yet? Or just throwing all those valuable collectables away? 🙂
My parents had to go through my grandmother’s house after she died. My grandfather had died just a couple of years earlier. My grandmother was strongly influenced by the great depression, and kept anything she thought might be of value. Plastic bags. Paper bags. The plastic plates that frozen dinners came on. String. Rubber bands. Glass bottles. Thankfully my grandparents had moved to a smaller house from their old home on a ranch with several barns and lots of storage space a decade or so before they died, because otherwise the task my parents faced would have been much bigger. My grandmother never got to the point where the things she saved were stored in the house, but the garage was packed. My parents filled a commercial dumpster with stuff to be thrown away, and I think they filled it a second time as well. Then they hired an auctioneer to do an estate sale for anything that was valuable but not special, like pots and pans, plates, furniture, etc. For the special stuff like my grandmother’s doll collection or her jewelry, they had it appraised and then sold it through someone who specialized in that kind of thing. Dad later said he was glad he was retired, otherwise he would not have been able to spare the time it took to clean out the house, and he vowed not to leave so much junk for my brother and me to throw away. It’s a long story, but I think the moral of the story is that for some things the trough of no value is likely to be longer than our lifetimes and perhaps longer than that of our children.
Altogether possible.
I think my basement is an exemplar of this whole discussion. *sigh*