6300% markup because of a story

Two New York Times journalists once set out to prove the power of storytelling with a fascinating experiment.

Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn gathered 200 cheap items, the kind you might find at a thrift store. Average cost: $1.25.

The items were totally ordinary. A plastic banana. An old wooden mallet. Even a plastic hotel room key. Everyday junk. These items had no intrinsic value whatsoever.

But they got some writers to write a story about each of the objects.

Each item was then auctioned off on eBay with the stories added to the descriptions.

You probably know where this is headed.The journalist originally paid a total of $197 for all 200 items. But when sold on eBay with a single story written for each one?

They sold for a total of nearly $8,000.

That’s a markup of more than 6,300%.

http://significantobjects.com/2010/10/08/horse-bust-beth-lisick-story/

So was the buyer a sucker?

Not at all. The simple answer is that the stories added a value to the items because they tapped into our emotions.

Never forget that we buy on emotion and justify with logic, not the other way around.

Once emotions were involved, the criteria for setting a fair market price changed.