Interesting points Roy.
I guess the value is what the individual is prepared to pay - whether that’s over or under the accepted odds.
We’ve all gone a little farther than perhaps we should on something we really like, but it’s something I try not to make a habit and wouldn’t recommend - always feels quite vice-like. After all if Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s sell tins of baked beans at 60p, regularly buying them for £1.50 isn’t savvy.. Perhaps not my finest analogy granted as resale value of baked beans probably isn’t established but hopefully makes the point.
Because there is a ‘dealer list price’ or at least a ‘going rate’ badges fall into capitalism and become tantamount to currency. I agree it’s the history behind the badge that should be the real value and fascination but sadly the world in which we live means that at least one eye will be on £ signs.
I agree it’s often the ‘investment hunters’ who seem to have an inflated opinion on what everything is worth and push up the prices for us mere mortals.
But even without money and putting a figure on a badge there’s still the rarity scale which itself acts as a value. Only a fool would swap an ORs GvR RE badge (no matter if it was the nicest one in the world) for say a Kitcheners Fighting Scouts slouch hat badge. One there’s tens of thousands of and the other perhaps a few hundred (if that) left, that in effect is a value even if not putting a monetary number on it. I’m sure even if both parties were happy with such a trade there would be a lot of collectors felling the chap with the RE badge had ‘done over’ the owner of the KFS, perhaps to the point of criminality!
So long as what’s being asked is reasonable and it doesn’t fall into the GREED category (like the 1916 eco Leinster that’s been floating around eBay for the last month at £150) then I think it’s natural there will be higher and lower values depending on the item and it’s condition etc.
Re the two gentlemen and their trade as Shakespeare wrote ‘who will not change a raven for a dove’, if each party felt they’re getting a raven but losing a dove that’s their opinion - they can’t really have wanted the badge on offer as much as their current badge.
Cheers,
Luke
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