My 11-year old son has been working hard to save money so that he can buy a Nintendo Switch. Over the past few weeks he came up with the idea of selling his Pokemon cards, which he never uses anymore, in order to fund this new venture. At first his idea was to take all his cards to a gaming store up in the city and see how much he could get...but I told him that this probably would not work. So today we came up with a plan, to find 8-10 cards that were likely of value, some of which showed potential of selling for at least $10 apiece online, and then try some of the shops to see what we could get.
It's always a fun lesson to watch children learn some of the realities of life. My son was convinced that we would walk into these stories and they would start throwing big cash wads at him and the Switch would be as good as bought. I was trying to tell him that it's not quite so easy...at worst people will try to cheat him, or at best the very nature of business means that the people who would buy his cards then have to turn and sell those cards in order to earn a profit. To do a good deal is not only about you being happy, I told him, but about making sure that both sides are happy.
We went to a few places but they didn't buy individual cards, so we finally went to a chain place in the mall. We presented two of his nicer cards (one which we had seen had gone for $150 online, the other probably $50) and asked what they would give. The manager, who didn't seem too interested, turned around and typed a bit on his computer and came back and offered my son 5 cents for the more valuable one, and 15 cents for the second.
Now, because of our conversations my son wasn't too heartbroken, but he was almost offended at this. The guy didn't want to make a deal, of course...but to insult somebody was just bad business. While walking through the mall we went through a Sears that is going out of business because of bankruptcy proceedings, and my son was asking why businesses fail. So I now had a perfect example of what happens when a business tries to screw over their customers or provides poor service. Companies take a long time to succeed, but they can throw away their goodwill almost overnight when they act in bad faith. We talked a lot about how car mechanics, or home repair businesses, or even card resellers can either do well by treating people right, or fail because they treat people badly.
Hopefully my son learned a few things about life and business today. If it took being disappointed in how people treat him to understand this, then maybe it's not a bad thing. And we'll always have the joke of knowing that bad businesses will try to offer you 5 cents because they are not ready to do the right thing.
