Point. It was just a guess, but I figured that most people would be less embarrassed to admit to owning a early printing of Justine than a box of Oui magazines and buttplugs.
I wonder how his parents felt about hiring the experts. If they have a problem with porn, reading the report from the Erotic Heritage Museum curators must have been awkward. “Lot One: One copy, Sorority Girls Sleepover, slightly foxed. Pages 13-16 stuck together.”
Serious question: How do they assess the worth of a collection that no longer exists? Go through the son’s list and offer estimates, based on his description, I assume?
Perhaps he kept a journal of his wank sessions. Which brings up a question - is porn you have jerked to one hundred times worth more or less than porn you only used once? Is popularity worth more than low mileage?
After the son proves he owned it in the first place. And then half the value of what he acquired during his marriage should go to his ex. Anyone whose spouse bought that much porn deserves it.
Call me a skeptic, but I doubt he declared “oh, by the way, I have $29,000 worth of acquired XXX-rated community property stashed under the bed, hers your half”.
And if he’s smart enough to putatively have collected and curated such rare and valuable artifacts, why isn’t he smart enough to not be homeless when he has $29,000 sitting in the back of his closest?
Would not be hard for me to decide to liquidate a chunk of it and find a studio apt, with good locks on the door so I could continue to enjoy the rest of it.
I was going to bring that up. Most people buy new porn because they’ve become jaded by the old stuff and it no longer turns them on. Maybe you hang on to some favorite items, but few people are going to value old porn very much, and drag it around with them if they move.
The value of the porn (as in, what’s it worth if sold) would have been. But the replacement cost is completely different. He’s probably figuring as long as he’s suing, he’s going to ask for replacement cost.
I recall a thread we had a few years ago about “Things you valued that your SO / roommate / parents threw away without your permission.”
Nobody owned up to a significant a porn collection but there were a LOT of tales of people feeling quite violated by somebody pitching their stash of whatever it was. Most of which were pretty mundane things.
IIRC there were also the usual stories of “I was 14 when I ‘outgrew’ baseball cards and Mom pitched them. Some of which would have become stupid-valuable by now.” Which is different from “I’m now 60 and had a bunch of stupid-valuable baseball cards from my childhood that my wife pitched last week.”
Unfortunately, I wasn’t having luck with searching. If anyone here recalls posting to it you may be able to find it by your username and the keyword of whatever you lost.
I dunno, truly valuable collectables aren’t always easy to sell. I have a collection of mechanical puzzles that would be extremely costly to replace. And i could probably get decent money for some of it. But to do so, I’d have to arrange an auction within the community of puzzle collectors, and the whole process would take months. They wouldn’t do me any good if i needed a place to sleep tonight.
(Well, maybe I could reach out to another puzzle collector and barter shelter for puzzles… But I can see that being awkward with a porn collection.)
I think the issue here (and pertinent to the OP) is that most reasonable people don’t sue their parents for any reason. I’m a grown man, but if my mother smacked me in the mouth for whatever reason, I might admit fault or chalk it up to her becoming a crazy old lady or apologize or just not go over to her house anymore or something in between. I don’t see me elevating that to a police matter, and most people don’t.
The reason why this is a subject of discussion is that this guy DID take a family matter to court and the strict letter of the law was applied, just as it would if my mother smacked me in the mouth. The guy is legally right, but will be viewed in his community as an asshole, which he probably is.
Conversely, a lot of people will suspect that calling the police on your kid, twice, as these parents apparently did, is not a sign of good parenting, past or present.
Sifting through somebodies else’s porn stash takes a special kind of person.
Agreed. A situation where your 40 year old child moves back in after a divorce is a family and personal matter. If you have to involve a judge or the police, one of you is an asshole.