# Morality question: Yard Sale edition. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 6, 2015, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096 "2015-01-06T03:38:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/41 "2015-01-10T04:28:04Z")
I was going to say it’s unethical but on looking at the responses I realised that there have been a few times the I have been to the races, a bookmaker has put up a plainly wrong price for a horse and, rather than tell him, I have backed the horse. On one occassion I got 100/1 about a horse that started 8/1. The OP also reminded me of a favorite fictional story on this theme from Roald Dahl. Here it is on YouTube: [Tales of the Unexpected Series 3 Episode 6 Parsons Pleasure.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqRac7wsV0A) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/42 "2015-01-10T05:58:10Z")
> [@Tread](#): > > Not only do I not see anything unethical about it, I see nothing unethical about negotiating down. > Someone selling a few old baseball cards for 20 bucks… I happen to see a Honus Wagner T206… ask will you take $10.00. Anyone dumb enough to sell a Honus Wagner T206 for $20 _deserves_ to get ripped off. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/43 "2015-01-10T14:41:40Z")
Others have alluded to this but whenever I heard that famous story about the guy who bought a picture frame that had a Declaration of Independence inside I really have wondered if anyone ever tracked down the seller and recorded what they thought. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/44 "2015-01-10T16:16:18Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Anyone dumb enough to sell a Honus Wagner T206 for $20 _deserves_ to get ripped off. How do you figure? What if they’re immigrants? What if they are just very ignorant about baseball cards and it would never occur to them that they might have value? Going back to my hypothetical: > [@](#): > > a family is starving, undernourishing their children, desperately trying to make ends meet, and is selling off everything they own in a last-ditch attempt to stay afloat for even a month more. And you see that they’re selling their dead son’s collection of Magic: The Gathering cards for $5 when it’s easily worth $50,000. Is it ethical to pay them $5 for it? Would you just pay them $5, walk away, sleep soundly at night, and, when recounting the story to others, say that they “deserve” to get ripped off? ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/45 "2015-01-10T16:27:06Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > Say you are at a yard sale and see an item you know for a fact is valuable but is being sold like it is junk, is it dishonest to just buy it for peanuts? > > Would the circumstances of the seller matter (say an old women vs. a young man)? Would offering a little bit more but still far less than the true value make things square? Would it matter if you were buying the undervalued item because you wanted the item vs. just buying it to resell it later? > > Just curious what people think. Economics 101: an item is worth what the seller and the buyer decide it is, nothing more and nothing less. I used to go around to thrift stores 20 and 25 years ao and paw thru their flat wear looking for silver. Most people didn’t know the difference between silver and silver plae. I made maybe $1000 over several years doing that, Probably never made $5.00 an hour at it though. Nother story, I was driving down the road and saw a 1954 Hudson for sale. 3 Jamaican brothers had returned to Florida when daddy died. they were asking $400 for it. Problem was they had several old cars and only one 6 volt battery. I paid them the $400 in cash, we started the old beast and I drove toward home batteryless wondering where I could possibly buy a 6 volt battery. I remembered an old fart my brother had worked for some. I pulled in at his shop and asked him where I could buy a 6 volt battery for the car I had just bought. “How much did you pay?” he asked me “$1000.” I said off the top of my head. “You wanna make $200 real fast?” He asked. I did and sold it to him immediately. He resold it the same day for $3000 I learned later. Did I screw the Jamaicans? No I don’t believe so. did the old guy screw me? No I don’t believe so. We were all happy with the transaction at the time it happened. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/46 "2015-01-10T16:54:31Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > If somebody grabs all the Hummel figurines you’re selling for five cents apiece or $5 for the lot of them, is it necessary to tell them that they all fell off a shelf during an earthquake and have been painstakingly glued back together? > > If they said, “You can’t sell these so cheap, they’re collector’s items,” then I would tell them. > > PS they are gone, which was the whole idea. Something like this sorta happened to me. At a garage sale, someone was selling a jar of change grandpa had been collecting since about 1906. It was full of all sorts of old coins. They wanted $1 for the pennies and nickels, $2 for the dimes, $5 for the quarters, $10 for half-dollars, and $20 for dollar coins, which about reflected the silver content in them. I glanced through them, and most were pretty ordinary, lots of buffalo nickels not worth more than 5 cents, but there were a couple of rare dates that individually were worth anywhere from $12-25. I looked through a couple of handfuls, and figured that I’d found at least $75 worth of coins. I didn’t know what was left it that jar. The rest might all be duds. I told them there were a few valuable coins in the jar, and they could get more than what they were asking if they took it to a coin dealer. They said they just wanted to get rid of it, and didn’t know where to go to find a coin dealer. So, I offered them $200 for the whole jar. I went home, and combed through it. It took me a couple of hours, especially since I was using books and dial-up internet, but I looked them all up, and I had well more than $200 in rare dates. I kept some, and sold some to a dealer (you don’t get as much from a dealer as you do selling them privately). I sold some more privately over the years. Some I still have. I had a lot of fun spending the Buffalo nickels, which really were not worth more than 5 cents, and there was a good $3 worth of them. Spent some wheat pennies too. For the heck of it, I counted up what the people would have made if they’d sold all the coins for what they were asking, and they wouldn’t have gotten $200. They would have gotten more than $100, though, but only if they’d sold the whole jar for exactly what they were asking. We both came out ahead, I think, because they just wanted to get rid of the jar, and I had fun going through all the coins, making discoveries, and appraising the coins. I collected coins pretty seriously when I was a kid, so I had all the flush of an excited 12-year-old who just found treasure. I could have gone through the whole jar, and paid what they were asking, and ended up spending less, but I felt good about the way I’d handled it. If I’d found anything really, really valuable, like a coins worth $10,000, I probably would have gone back and given them a cut, but the most expensive coin was more in the are of $60. Interestingly, except for a couple of quarters, most of the rare and valuable coins were nickles. IIRC, there were only a couple of silver dollars, and they weren’t worth much more than their silver content. ---
**Author:** ![carlotta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@carlotta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carlotta)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/47 "2015-01-10T16:54:51Z")
As someone who has had a lot of yard sales, I don’t think it’s unethical or dishonest. I’ve also sold a fair number of things on craigslist and ebay and through other second hand outlets. I’ve come to the conclusion that mostly it is more work than it is worth to me. Actually even yard sales are generally more work than they are worth to me and I just give stuff away for free to thrift stores. Part of the decision I make when having a yard sale is that I want this stuff gone more than I want to do a bunch of research to find out if any of it is valuable and go to the trouble of getting it to the people to whom it is valuable. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/48 "2015-01-10T17:50:01Z")
No worse than the scam some people try to pull when they go to a yard sale and see furniture and try to get you to come down with a sob story of how they are buying for someone who just lost their home. I might just do it if I had some proof. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/49 "2015-01-10T17:51:03Z")
> [@Tread](#): > > Not only do I not see anything unethical about it, I see nothing unethical about negotiating down. > Someone selling a few old baseball cards for 20 bucks… I happen to see a Honus Wagner T206… ask will you take $10.00. > > The seller has a right to ask any price, if you counter and they accept, then they feel they have gotten a fair price for their item. It is only worth what it is worth to the seller. Only the owner of an item can set the value IMO. It you find a price that they will accept, then you have given them at least, what it is worth to them. OTOH, what if they had say $100 tag on that Homus Wagner card and they darn well knew it was a forgery? ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/50 "2015-01-10T19:27:26Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > OTOH, what if they had say $100 tag on that Homus Wagner card and they darn well knew it was a forgery? That would be fraudulent and unethical… but the hypothetical existence of someone trying to defraud people at yard sales doesn’t somehow imply some high level ethical balancing which makes it OK to take advantage of other people at other yard sales. The two hypotheticals are independent events, unless it’s the same yard sale. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/51 "2015-01-10T20:20:04Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Going back to my hypothetical: > > Would you just pay them $5, walk away, sleep soundly at night, and, when recounting the story to others, say that they “deserve” to get ripped off? There’s no “rip off”. It’s the definition of “Fair Market Value”. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/52 "2015-01-10T23:05:01Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > There’s no “rip off”. It’s the definition of “Fair Market Value”. I was just using the language in the post I was responding to, post #41. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/53 "2015-01-11T00:36:05Z")
My mother (now deceased) was part of the sub-culture that made estate sales their lives. She was very well trained in art and researched lots. She bought lots of stuff thinking it might be an original whatever and it wasn’t and some that was. In the real world you very rarely “know” what something is worth, you are betting on your knowledge. She was also a hoarder and going through her house after her death was a major undertaking, researching literally many many thousands of objects to determine the crap from the items of value. That said one of her friends had jewelry and watches as his expertise and would never buy something knowing it was actually worth much much more than it was priced at … OTOH he would ask if they had any costume jewelry or old watches and offer an amount for the whole lot without evaluating it. He knew that usually there would be enough that had value as collectables to cover his cost and that every so often something of major value would be in there as well … once a collectable watch that sold for over 10K. He did not go back and give them a bigger cut even though he would not have felt right buying it for the small amount if had known what he was buying ahead of time. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/54 "2015-01-11T00:40:37Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > There’s no “rip off”. It’s the definition of “Fair Market Value”. I suspect any reasonable definition of fair market value involves more than two people. Much less when one person has no idea of an items value as actually determined by the market. ---
**Author:** ![Tread](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Tread](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tread)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/55 "2015-01-11T02:27:50Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > That would be fraudulent and unethical… but the hypothetical existence of someone trying to defraud people at yard sales doesn’t somehow imply some high level ethical balancing which makes it OK to take advantage of other people at other yard sales. The two hypotheticals are independent events, unless it’s the same yard sale. I don’t see how paying someone what they are asking for an item, is _taking advantage of them_… of course opinions on this vary which is why the question was asked to start with ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/56 "2015-01-11T03:34:21Z")
> [@Tread](#): > > I don’t see how paying someone what they are asking for an item, is _taking advantage of them_… So, you’d pay $5 for something you could resell for $50,000, knowing that the people selling it are in dire financial straits, and never think twice or feel any twinge of guilt? ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/57 "2015-01-11T03:58:27Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > So, you’d pay $5 for something you could resell for $50,000, knowing that the people selling it are in dire financial straits, and never think twice or feel any twinge of guilt? I don’t recall ever knowing the financial status of the people running any yard sale I’ve ever been to. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/58 "2015-01-11T04:04:25Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > So, you’d pay $5 for something you could resell for $50,000, knowing that the people selling it are in dire financial straits, and never think twice or feel any twinge of guilt? The situation you are positing is an extreme example and is highly unlikely to occur in real life. Nonetheless, information is valuable and is a normal part of negotiating, so I would say yes, it is acceptable to buy a good at the price it is offered. Any obligation I may have to the seller as a matter of basic decency is independent of the transaction we were involved in. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/59 "2015-01-11T04:44:03Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#): > > The situation you are positing is an extreme example and is highly unlikely to occur in real life. Nonetheless, information is valuable and is a normal part of negotiating, so I would say yes, it is acceptable to buy a good at the price it is offered. Any obligation I may have to the seller as a matter of basic decency is independent of the transaction we were involved in. Right, as I said when I first posted that hypothetical back 30 posts ago, it’s an extreme situation. Which is what I think makes it interesting… If there’s an antique dealer who should know better and generally has the knowledge of what’s what, and he lets something slip buy and I buy something for $50 that’s worth $250, I will feel zero guilt. But he’s a professional who (a) has no excuse for not knowing better, and (b) presumably isn’t in dire financial straits. But change some of the characteristics of the hypothetical, and vastly increase the disparity in value, and it starts to feel dirty and immoral. > [@Shakes](#): > > I don’t recall ever knowing the financial status of the people running any yard sale I’ve ever been to. Don’t fight the hypothetical. Maybe they’re your neighbor. Maybe you overhear someone discussing it. Maybe you’re a teacher and you know that their kids have been borderline-undernourished for months. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096/60 "2015-01-11T20:16:48Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > This. Take your profit, which you probably used time at least to get to (knowing that that item was worth a lot probably took an education which cost money), but give some money to the person selling it. They might well be selling off their family heirlooms and I’d feel terrible cashing in on that. But the next person down the line might well have given them nothing. I’m not sure why assuming that the next person _could_ do worse than yourself is a good reason to absolve yourself. Apparently, you don’t think that cheating the struggling family out of $ 40 000 is unethical. So let’s assume instead that they left their items unatended. You steal them and leave money for 1/5 of their value. Does the assumption that the nex passer by might have stolen the items and left nothing make you less guilty? What other people might have done is irrelevant, especially since, for all you know, the next potential buyer might have, at the contrary, pointed at the real value of the magic cards. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/morality-question-yard-sale-edition/709096.md?page=4)