At the front of Fred Meyer, there’s a stand where you can buy jewelry for forty bucks a pop. No one in Fred Meyer believes that what they’re selling is worth forty bucks, but they believe that they can convince you to buy it for forty bucks, and the reason they believe that is they know that the people buying jewelry at Goodwill for three bucks want it to be worth forty bucks. 

     I grew up believing that anything you found for cheap, in one of those capsule machines at a grocery store or at the counter of a gift store, could be worth something if you wanted it to be. It didn't need to be worth anything to anyone else, it just had to mean something to you. I still think that, but I've started noticing that there are charms and necklaces being sold for a lot more than they're worth. I'm learning that a lot of what I thought made me unique is actually very common, including my belief that worthless things can be valuable if you like them enough. But I don't think that means we should charge forty dollars for jewelry that will only fetch three dollars at Goodwill. Just because something can be important doesn't mean that it will be.