The Little World

My local hobby shop has a shallow table out the front of the store near the tills. It contains the specials and bargains that they would like to clear quickly. I look at it every time I go to the shop and have come to a number of conclusions:

1. Some things will never sell, because they were never intended to sell. Oh, they may be good enough and new enough, but then again so was the HINDENBURG. The items on the table may have been the products of factories, workshops, collectives, cottages, or the Devil’s Cauldron, but their presence there is badge positive of their total worthlessness. The hobby shop has not been able to sell them to old men, drunks, or children, and has despaired.
2. Many items actually do have worth. If you are stuck in the jungle and need to persuade gullible natives that you are a magic witch doctor, there are chemical trick packs that would do it.
3. Some items are well-priced. They started their retail career like many of us – proud and defiant. The customers have corrected that. They are now priced at their real value and pray in their boxes every night that they will not be discounted further.
4. Some items are safe. Some are dangerous. Some are great ideas, some good ideas, and some just ideas. You’ll never know until you take ’em home and follow the instructions. Okay, they’re exclusively in Japanese, but as long as they do not ask you to slash yourself open they can’t be that bad.
5. Many of the items were fashionable three years ago. You like retro – buy them and go back to that magical time when the owner of the hobby shop had too much beer and the rep from the wholesalers stayed sober.
6. You never can tell. The junk you buy may be exactly what you need to use for your magnum opus. Just because no-one else wants it and it is old stock does not mean that a person with a vision cannot make it into a valuable thing. Go-on. give it a try. The worst you can do is waste ten bucks and break all the windows down one side of the house.

The same general philosophy applies to book sales, farmers markets, and car boot sales. If you do not expend your patrimony at any of them you can sometimes benefit more than lose. At least you’ll get access to raw materials you’d other wise miss out on. If the local toxic chemical disposal site is giving taste testers for the PCB’s you might want to drive past but otherwise give most things a go.