It isn't - deprecation of held goods is always a risk and if you're working on consignment then that comes with weird financial liabilities. If there's a flood and you lose your inventory it sucks - if there's a flood and you lose an inventory of consigned values then suddenly you're potentially exposed to paying market value for a number of items in addition to all the site damage you'll need to address. Capacity is one aspect of the costs of holding inventory - but breakage is the much more expensive consideration and consignment just makes it even more expensive.
a large part of the value of secondhand stuff is in the box and packaging, assuming those nice boxes in the image were from his collection - those are a little more fragile than the Lego pieces themselves.
Edit: wait, the whole collection was sealed and new in box. Yea, just water damage to those boxes would cut the value by at least 10%. Collectors are picky as shit.
They were sealed in box? Yeah you'd be right that damage would be easy and could significantly reduce the value.
I didn't realize people bought Lego to leave in the box. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised because it's a common thing for collectors to do in other hobbies.
Even without the box I think you're underestimating how damaging water is. If you're experience a flood it's never distilled H20, sometimes it's sewage and that's just awful, but even if it's storm water or a broken water main the water isn't the difficult portion (though that alone can lead to all sorts of mold issues) it's the sediment. If that sediment is from brown water there are obvious biological hazards which may lead to destruction being the only economical resolution, but even if it's just mud and sand that forces a huge expenditure to actually clean the products and if there's a signficantly misaligned pH it may damage products that you otherwise think of as water resistant.
Given this was a set of full star wars legos with decades of age a lot of those bricks are already going to have degraded somewhat and technix style components are likely to be significantly damaged from internal sediment accumulation. If you drop your water proofed water in a stagnant pond for three weeks it's likely that the internal seal will hold up and protect the delicate components but you'll probably need someone to pull the glue or other sealant out and replace it as well as going over the exterior surface with cleaning solutions to get it back to the quality it was in before being submerged - and flooding is rarely an instantaneous affair.
I wouldn't underestimate just how damaging to goods storage can be - and if you're doing it at scale you're going to be paying that cost constantly just as a percentage of value stored.
Lego survives being eaten by babies and poop back out again (source: my younger brother). They also survive being left out at theme parks (ie the various Legolands) and primary schools under all weather conditions for months and years.
So I don't think I'm underestimating the resilience of Lego bricks to flooding.
There was an article a on HN a while back about the plastics chosen by Lego. They put an exceptional amount of time and effort into choosing durable materials for their bricks.
I believe in this case the consignment contract requires the store to hold insurance on the consigned merchandise, which I assume is intended to address this concern.
Taxing a pied-a-terre $40K/yr or more per year provides more resources for developing housing than simply evicting the owner and reclaiming the space. There aren't enough pied-a-terres to house the people who need housing. We need expensive premium housing to fund affordable housing at scale.
The cost of a "pied-à-terre" ranges from $500k to over $1.5m.
A new house costs at MINIMUM $400k to build (in New York state, not to mention the city).
There are around 100k pied-à-terre in New York CITY alone.
There are about 350k homeless people in New York city.
Taxing all of those secondary 'homes' at 40k would and spending those taxes ONLY on new housing construction would yield at MOST 100k houses (per year).
So I was incorrect in what was more efficient IF taxes only go to building new houses... which I AFAIK is not accurate to how those taxes would be distributed. (it may still be better if enough revenue is going to housing dev).
So a ~10% tax rate for SECOND+ homes is still too small considering how many houses we need to build. I argue for 100% tax: pay that price every year if you want a SECOND+, that would completely offset a new house in compensation for tying one up).
If you are rich enough to afford a vacation home: you pay vacation prices.
You don't get to use it as an "investment vehicle" we need to dissuade that mentality completely.
It's impossible to answer unless you have a *100% complete search tool*.
No sytem can know everything. It doesn't matter how many tools you give it. It's always wrong to force binary True / False without shades of "I don't know"
Wikipedia owners are free to not have any employees, to prefer employees who donate some of their pay back to the organization, or solicit only volunteers. Workers are free to ask to be paid for their work.
> the intent of the original Zelda game (and every Zelda title since) was to give players a "miniature garden that they can put inside their drawer." His inspiration came from the fields, woods, and caves outside Kyoto that he had explored as a boy, and he has always tried to impart this sense of exploration and limitless wonder to players through his Zelda titles.
Nope. I have no public personal presence on any webs. (intentionally)
Thinking about the possible reason you're asking:
I've stopped trying getting good pictures anyways, long ago.
I came to the conclusion that any camera, be it digital compact, action, smartphone irritates the animals. They may be curious initially, but as soon as the electronics try to 'rangefind/sharpen/focus' the picture they are gone. Or getting angry. Not even thinking of flash.
Edit: It destroys the moment. Be it by sounds, or even visible laserfingers fanning out. Or maybe distracting me from holding my internal projection of intent and movement upright. Which I'm thinking of having some impact on the goodwill of the involved animals, too.
reply