I, too, found a lot of the comments made from 145-148 very intriguing..
My uncle, who is 68ish, is a tremendous tight-ass. He, for example, would never go into a restaurant and pay $7 for a burger and fries because he knows he could make 3 burgers and fries for $4 at home. So each time he hears the price of something has gone up, he can't fathom it. I think he still thinks of money as he did in the 60s when he used to say that he'd pick cotton for 2cents a pound, or something ridiculous like that... "I can't believe it. When I was a kid, <___> used to cost $2 !" (If I truly had a nickel for every time he said something regarding the incredible jump in the price of gold a few years back, well, I'd be a wealthy man.)
I don't want for this to become flame-worthy, but by reading a bunch of incredulous responses to the prices of things on here, I'd just like to point out that you guys are
not the infallible kings of valuation. Things that seem worthless sell for a lot, and things that are rare sometimes lose value. It's all a fucking gamble. It is the way of the world.
If buying and reselling higher was so easy, every single person would do it. But they don't because most people lack A) a feel for the current taste of the masses, and C) an anticipatory sense of value.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we often, and incorrectly, view the objective value of something through the subjective prism of our interests, and we find anyone else's taste is something different thoroughly incomprehensible. This applies to almost everything -- food, clothing, music, religion, and yes, even printed color paper..
Hmm - to be fair, there are probably people who consider us to be stupid. Paying $00's for an image that has been reprinted by Maxi just so WE can say it came from 1971.
So what, they may ask. You're an idiot, they may say.