Gas is gonna hit four bucks a gallon. The ten-plus year recession that's been a dot on the horizon for the past couple of years has now clearly turned towards us and is picking up speed. I wanna be out of as much debt as possible when it finally smacks into us.
Hence my collectible items (i.e. items with a value higher than retail and well above their intrinsic value) are all being looked at with close scrutiny and will likely end up on the "ebay shelf".
I'm even looking at the trivial now. I've had an old HP 20S calculator on my desk for about ten years. They're going for about $15 on eBay. Circuit City was selling a scientific calculator for five bucks with a $5 rebate, so I figured that it was time for the 20S to go.
Well, I went to Circuit City to find that they didn't have it in stock. They did, however, have the next higher model for the equally-impressive price of $2.99.
And it's a damn good little calculator. Not as sturdy as the old 20S (which is why people likely still like the old HP's, as they don't die after living on a construction site for a year), but it's got it beaten in the capabilities department.
While checking out, the teenaged checkout girl sighed and said "Ya know, I paid over $100 for my calculator for school". I was tempted to tell her "If you've still got it, sell it now and buy one of these."
Just preparing myself for some belt-tightening. Call me cheap, but cheapness is gonna get trendy. . .unfortunately.
