Revalorize

Value seems arbitrary. Products are sold for different prices in different stores, and even in the same store, different prices for different quantities, etc. Stock prices rise and fall for the most ridiculous reasons–with “uncertainty” being the favorite. Some things are valued highly because they are brand new, and others because of great age.

A friend became a coin dealer after retirement. He turned his hobby into a business and “hasn’t worked a day” since. But he says the coins are getting easier to get and harder to sell, and the prices are dropping like crazy. The new generations don’t want the old collectables. Not coins, not baseball cards, not Grandmom’s dishes… These have very little value to the younger folks. And it seems unlikely that Beanie Babies will ever be worth their original price, let alone the insane markup that we saw on eBay for a while.

Children sometimes become so attached to a blanket or stuffed animal that it becomes difficult to even free it up long enough for the laundry. To anyone else, the object is a dirty, stinky mess. But it is a prized posession to its owner; no thing has higher value. But eventually, and sometimes suddenly, Binky is left behind. Its value has gone from an incredible peak to near zero in a few breaths. Nothing intrinsic to that blanket or toy has anything to do with its value. That has only ever been determined by the attachment the child felt to it, and when that faded, the fall was steep and permanent.

This value re-evaluation is what today’s word is talking about. Revalorize is to assign a new value to something, or the process of determining a new value for something. In truth, this is constant, and affects more than just coins and children’s toys. I read that a 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, which sold for $5000 when new, and probably lost value pretty quickly at the beginning, sold for over $2Million earlier this year. In fact, it broke the record for the highest price for a Mustang at auction. The previous record was $1.3Million. Incidentally, it was set by the very same car back in 2013.