I think that there are many aspects of all collectible markets that are a little asinine, whether it's Star-Wars figurines, Tiffany lamps, or fuzz boxes. Isn't there some point where a price crosses over to the "asinine" region for a given object for nearly everyone? Wouldn't $2,000,000 for Croationsensation's Boba Fett seem well past this point for everyone here? Couldn't that money be spent more wisely, in stead of being used for an individual's quest for their personal Rosebud? The pricing of this fuzzz pedal is well past this point for me, and probably for everyone here. Wouldn't $50,000 make it asinine for everyone (ignoring the potential ROI as an investment)?
To be fair, last year I spent $8500 on a mint condition '61 ES-175. I realize that this would seem ridiculous to some here, and I'm OK with that. Everyone has their own tipping point. Someone could make the argument that I could have gotten a 2004 ES-175 for $2500 and donated $6000 to charity. They would be making a good point frankly. I'm not claiming that I am not a hypocrite. :green: On the other hand, I can't ignore ROI in my decision, and I could probably make a good argument for some elevated intrinsic value on the basis of "they don't make 'em like they used to". I wouldn't blame someone for spending $2700 on this pedal if they thought it would be worth $3200 next year. But that wouldn't stop me from thinking that $2700 is a ridiculous price. I will also concede that ignoring ROI, $8500 was too much money for my ES-175. I could probably get a better custom jazzbox built by one of our forum members for the same price.
There is a good book I read in college, called "Money Mischief" by the economist Milton Friedman. In the book, it tells a story of 12ft stone coins used by Micronesian Yap islanders for currency. Originally, the stones were rolled from house to house when payments were made. Later, it was determined that it would be easier to leave the coins were they were and just reassign ownership. Finally, due to seismic activity, the coastal village where the coins were located sunk into the sea, with no hope of every reclaiming the coins. Wealthy families still retained "ownership" of these sunken coins and used such ownership to retain their status among the other islanders. While this story was used as an allegory for modern fiat economics, I think it also serves well to illuminate some of the foibles of the collectible markets, where items are not priced on intrinsic value, but rather are worth an arbitrary value that a small group of people assign to them.
