[meteorite-list] Total Number of Meteorites?

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Dec 7 13:59:29 2005
Message-ID: <00ed01c5fb5f$f33c3000$bec8fea9_at_ns279>

I'm not a philosopher,
but both of your definitions mean to me correct definitions for price, not
for value.

Two examples:
"how much something costs to produce":

How much it costs to produce a child?
A hopefully romantic evening and a glass of wine.
Price: 5$.
How high is the value of a child? I hope endless high.

"how much someone is willing to pay for something":

How much the United States were willing to pay to Russia for Alaska?
Price 7.2 million $.
Value? Ask the patriots :-)

How much you personally value a price or price a personal value,
is at least not an universal variable to describe a market....

Cheerio!
Martin




----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse_at_charter.net>
To: <Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 7:45 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Total Number of Meteorites?


On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 18:55:53 +0100, "Martin Altmann"
<altmann_at_meteorite-martin.de> wrote:

>Wrong.
>You're talking about prices not values.
>You want to pay a price below value for your iPod.
>

No, you are wrong. You missed my point entirely. I said that value can
mean "how much something
costs to produce" OR it can mean "how much someone is willing to pay for
something". So if the
price to produce something is higher than the value that I place in
something, then I'm not going to
buy it no matter how much it costs to produce.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=value

1. An amount, as of goods, services, or money, considered to be a fair and
suitable equivalent for
something else; a fair price or return.

2. Monetary or material worth: the fluctuating value of gold and silver.

3. Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit: the
value of an education.

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value

"In general, the value of something is how much a product or service is
worth to someone relative to
other things (often measured in money).

In neoclassical economics, the value of an object or service is often seen
as nothing but the price
it would bring in an open and competitive market. This is determined
primarily by the demand for the
object relative to supply. Other economists often simply equate the value of
a commodity with its
price, whether or not the market is competitive."



>A market has customers. Meteorite Market has none. And almost no suppliers.
>And compared to all other markets. We have no goods :-)
>With meteorites we have a supply, but we have zero demand.

Thanks for making my point for me. Since "we have a supply, but we have
zero demand", then it is
silly to complain about the low prices for an item for which there is no
demand (by your own
reasoning). If nobody is willing to pay x price for a certain meteorite,
then that means by
definition that nobody places a value of x price on that meteorite. So if
very few people are
willing to pay 5 cents a gram for unclasifieds, then very few people
concider unclassifieds to be
worth 5 cents per gram. By definition. Value is what people are willing to
pay. I know I've
bought unclassified stuff before for UNDER 5 cents a gram because nobody
else was willing to pay
more-- because nobody placed that amount of value in them. I'd say that
most meteorite collectors
who want bulk amounts of unclassified NWAs already have bulk amounts of
unclassified NWAs. I myself
have around 9 kilos of them-- which is probably a lot more than some have,
and a lot less than
others have. I'd take more kilos of them to add to that pile-- but only if
the price was below the
5 cents a gram I've been paying lately. If there were lots and lots of
collectors eager to add
extra kilos to their own piles of unclassifieds, you can bet that multi-kilo
lots on Ebay wouldn't
be sitting around being largely ignored at 5 to 10 cents per gram. It seems
that most collectors
are saturated with as much stock of unclassifieds as they want/are willing
to buy at current low
prices. The VALUE, or "Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor"
of tossing another kilo
in their collection is less than 5 cents a gram.
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Received on Wed 07 Dec 2005 01:56:35 PM PST