Bravo!   Well said David.

On 6/24/06, David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> At 10:55 PM 6/23/2006 -0500, Jim Felder wrote:
> >There are a good many aspersions cast on this list at folks who value
> >original condition over "improvement" modifications. I ask them:
> >Which is worth more, a 1957 Jaguar with with the original engine, or
> >with a much better Chevy V8? An MGA with a 1500 CC original engine,
> >or an 1800 MGB replacement? In the short term, the so-called
> >improvements work well and are desirable. In the long term, they are
> >detrimental to value.
>
> Jim, value isn't always measured in dollars.  Some folks prefer to
> have the cake; others to eat it.  Neither one is wrong, but
> collectors as a class don't seem to quite understand that it's *they*
> who are eccentric, not the users.  Actually in a very real sense
> they're perverse: they pay great sums for perfect slices of extremely
> old cake, specifically for the purpose of not eating it.  A few years
> ago one of them paid the price of eleven of those $11k Loaf Westys
> for a bottle of wine that Thomas Jefferson neglected to drink (In the
> excitement of the coup the new owner held a party for the bottle of
> wine during which he dropped it on the floor -- so by historical
> accident it is known without the slightest question that the wine had
> ceased being wine many years previously and was now only making the
> bottle dirty.  And the collector had enough detachment and presumably
> enough spare cash to see some humor and irony in the situation a few
> days later, good on him I say).
>
> But the only thing that made this perfectly good bottle worth a
> bidding war to collectors was that nobody had gotten any actual use
> out of the originally valuable wine it contained.  Thermodynamically
> that's a bit odd, and I'm sure I'm not the only engineering type who
> thinks so.  Likewise, the notion that a valuable and beautiful piece
> of antique furniture only retains its value if it remains ugly and
> worn-out is, um, perverse, and dishonors the memory of the original
> craftsman who built it to be *used* and who also dressed it in beauty
> to be enjoyed in the solid present and maintained in good order for
> the future -- not neglected to become ramshackle and then cherished
> at huge expense as a symbol to focus the worship of its own former
> splendor.   Eeuuugghhh...it makes my teeth itch.
>
> The core of this sort of collectorship is self-denial and a sort of
> asceticism in the heart of the collector and in a rarefied way I'm
> sure it's a Good Thing.  It's certainly a Magnificent Thing, though
> equally certainly it's Not War.  And without the slightest cavil,
> this great country has long stood for the unquestioned right of every
> man to go to Hell in his own particular handbasket.   But a whiff of
> the pit hangs over the whole thing for me because I don't see it
> widely acknowledged that only the rich can afford to turn economics
> upside down for the purpose of their game, and only rich nations can
> afford to have many Collectors about the place (Historically I think
> it's often been limited to the guy in the palace  and a few of his
> buddies, and written off as a Cost of Government).  And no corporeal
> being can afford to apply this inverted economics across the board
> precisely because it *is* perverse.  King Midas was a Collector....
>
> There's nothing wrong with playing the game, but I think there's a
> lot wrong with keeping a straight face about it in public.  Decadent
> games, even such gently decadent ones as this are a subtle and
> acquired taste,  and letting babes and innocents and non-rich play
> without clearly Informed Consent bothers me.   Also, I fear that in
> their innocent but well-financed pursuit of the ineffable collectors
> sometimes tempt others to a Faustian bargain, perhaps even
> knowingly.  Rich men have long used their pocket change and petty
> cash to pry at poor men's souls and squeeze them like toothpaste; and
> cynically pretended that these were transactions of economics when in
> fact they were very close to raw force.  For some reason I'm reminded
> that from the bank's standpoint, the fellow using the ATM with a gun
> pointed at his head has just made an *authorized withdrawal* and is
> expected [collectively] therefore to shoulder alone the social costs
> of a system where he can be taken any of dozens of nearby places and
> used as a kind of human lock-picking tool to steal his own
> money.  The bank didn't, after all, force him to accept an ATM card,
> and it has its profits to look after.
>
> Perhaps it's I who am the innocent -- perhaps the culture Has It All
> In Hand and I should stop fretting.  I keep looking for a bit of wink
> wink, nudge nudge -- and not finding it.  Scares me a bit.
>
> Jim, sorry for unloading this on you -- it's twenty years of stuff I
> didn't know I'd been thinking coherently about until the words
> floated up just now.  Will you retroactively accept this temporary
> post as ad hoc Symbol of Evil Personified long enough to give these
> ideas a little air, and not allow anything I've said to sting you
> personally?  You'd have my gratitude and surely be entitled to the
> Official Foil Cloak...l
>
> Best Regards,
> david
>
>
>
> --
> David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
> '84 Westy "Dutiful Passage," '85 GL "Poor Relation"
>

--
Jake
1984 Vanagon GL
1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie"
www.crescentbeachguitar.com