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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (89413)	11/23/2004 1:16:23 PM
From: ManyMoose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I look at antique hunting as a pleasurable activity if not overdone, which is easy to do if my wife has her way. I don't understand your ambivalence about superior knowledge giving you the chance to get a bargain. That is simply an extension of hunting at its origins. Maximum payoff for least expenditure. It is perfectly legitimate. The alternative: Let the government decide prices. I think you know the consequences of that. Besides, who is the government? Just some organized people, after all. I see no ambivalence in helping battered women or teaching children to read. However, feeding the hungry does have ambivalence. For example, in The Sudan, the harsh climate provides only enough sustenance for X number of people, and you feed X + Y people because they are hungry. Then X + Y people survive, but the environment can only sustain X. The consequence of that, if you stop feeding X + Y, is that X + Y people starve to death instead of only X being pretty darn hungry. You also destroy the native ability of those people to provide for themselves, and enable warlords to gain power. If I were you I would rejoice in every antique bargain that I find. Last night on "Antique Roadshow" a fellow displayed a nice ceramic hot chocolate pot and five matching ceramic glasses. After some discussion it was revealed that he paid $23,000 for them, to which I could hardly contain my sarcasm. But the appraiser said the pot alone was worth $28,000 and the glasses were worth $7,500 each! So if that fellow can find a greater fool than he, he should take advantage, don't you think?

To: epicure who wrote (89413)	11/30/2004 12:35:50 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 108807

Every amazing deal you get, is at someone else's cost, and maybe they really needed the money. At the time they valued the money more then the antique. In a very real sense it was to their benefit to sell it to you, not at their cost. If demand is reduced by people like you not wanting to "hurt someone", than the selling prices will go down. Its true that if they had spent more time studying the antique market that they could have gotten a better price but the time spent on this studying is a cost as well. Sometimes it has a direct dollar cost to it (less time spent on dollar producing activities, costs for books or magazines about the subject ect.), sometimes it doesn't, but even if there is no direct dollar cost using your time is a cost. Tim