i bought a table today.
a gigantic table.
14 feet long.
and apparently when the table was originally being sold they were asking $30,000 for it.
that’s nuts, right?
$30,000 for a table?
giant tables are pricey. i once looked at a table & benches from a french monastery that was $60,000.
yikes.
i thought that the dot-com era had ended?
who buys $60,000 tables?
so originally my table was priced at $30,000 but i got it for $4,500 (i guess it had been for sale for a while and they wanted to get rid of it as it was taking up a lot of space…).
which is still a lot for a table. but it’s a lot less than $30,000.
this way i can have christmas and thanksgiving with lots of friends and family and we can all sit at the same, giant table.
you’d be amazed at how expensive some furniture can be here in the nyc.
personally i’ve never spent all that much on furniture (i did buy a chair for $250 once. that seemed pricey to me. even though it was one of those beautiful eames dcw chairs which are more like sculpture than furniture. i know, i’m a dirty yuppie).
i’ve never quite understood the phenomenon whereby people spend more money for things than they need to. if you can get a very good something-or-other for, say, $100, why would you want to spend $1,000 for it?
i’ve never understood luxury goods.
watches, for example.
you can get a fantastic watch for $20 that will keep time and probably do some other cool things like keep track of the population of egrets or monitor your metabolic rate. so why would you want to spend $1,000 on a watch if you don’t need to?
such things have always mystified me. i went to a fancy clothing store with an acquaintance of mine and he was salivating over a $1,200 sweater.
me, being practical, offered the opinion that you could get a really nice sweater for $40 (or second hand for $5) and then you’d have $1,160 left to have fun with.
he then tried to show me the workmanship and quality and materials of the $1,200 sweater. to which i said that i had a $25 sweater that i bought at an army/navy store and it kept me warm and wasn’t in danger of falling apart, so why didn’t he go to an army/navy store and get a $25 sweater and save a lot of money?
he then looked at me like i was a philistine while i looked at him like he had lost his mind.
but i guess that happiness is in short supply for a lot of people, and if buying an overpriced luxury good makes them happy, well then who am i to judge. right? ok, i judge. i can’t help it. i do think that buying a $1,200 sweater when there are great $40 sweaters just doesn’t make sense.
i guess it was growing up during the depression and having to eat old potatoes and shoes. it’s made me far too practical for these sybaritic times, huh.
cookware, for example.
why would you want to boil water in a $200 pot when you can boil water in a $10 pot? i understand that professional chefs need some fancy cookware, but most of us are not fancy chefs, so why can’t we be content to boil water in a $10 pot?
i should shut up, cos i certainly don’t want the ‘coalition of overprice luxury goods manufacturers’ planning my demise…
-moby
