TomatoTomahto wrote:grt2boutdoors wrote:This one is the worst post so far: ...
It reminded me of a single mother who had been talked into investing most of her money in baseball cards, for the benefit of her son who was intending to attend college and med school. She at first didn't believe me when I told her that they were worth a small fraction of what she had paid. She assumed that they'd be worth 10x what she paid. I explained that, as a consignment seller, I'd be happy if I could get her that, but that in the end, they're pictures printed on paper, and worth only what someone else was willing to pay.
I don't know if the stories on that site are all true, but even if only a few are, they are heartbreaking. True, most of the people got greedy, but I don't see it as a character fail if you get greedy trying to provide for your child. Many of us here might know better, but there for the sense of a BH ...
A very good friend of mine, his wife "invested in fine china collectibles, limited editions, etc. from Germany, known only to those who belong to the "club" and bought these things". Spent thousands from the '80's on........then also bought some more trinkets from the Franklin Mint made of sterling silver. Long story short, they thought they had a "significantly appreciated investment portfolio of fine china and sterling silver" that they could liquidate for a nice profit when they struck bad times, they were beyond shocked when I told them the best they could likely get was 50% cost. They didn't believe me, so they went to an appraiser who dealt in this stuff on consignment and were told the best they could hope for was 40% of cost as there was tons of this stuff being dumped on the market at the same time, the melt value of the Franklin Mint silver was less than 1/10th the cost of the purchase price.
Then, they tried a soft sell to have me take it off their hands........I felt bad for them and would have as soon as just written them a check and forget about it but their pride was too much to take it and they retracted their sell offer soon after making it to me.
No, it's not a character fail, it's just bad luck of trusting the wrong person, it's just bad luck they didn't investigate further as the auditor apparently gave them a "material failure of internal controls" opinion on the audited financial statements - huge red flag. All around, it's just bad for those who bought the Willy Wonka bar thinking they had the golden ticket, but in this case they didn't even get a consolation prize of chocolate, just a bad case of indigestion.