cost and value wage titanic struggle

This 1954 GM show car which never resulted in anything was hyped to good effect recently and sold for an incredible 3.24 million dollars on Saturday.

It is an Oldsmobile F-88 and it is said that there are 2 more surviving examples. It bears a strong resemblance to the 1953 Corvette which did result in something.

This is a car that most people don’t even know about much less lust after. Nevertheless some people think that it is worth over 3 million dollars.

And that is the difference between cost and value.

It is costing someone 3.24 million dollars and he would argue that it is a good value. I would have to disagree.

Since it is relatively unknown it cannot draw many people to his museum.

Since it is 50 years old it cannot deliver performance like a modern sports car.

Since Oldsmobile did not follow up on the car with a production model it has no great historical value, it is just another show car from GM.

To be a good value something or someone has to deliver more than another choice that is relatively the same cost.

Cost is just what we pay for something.

Value is the return on the investment.

This is a little bit of arithmetic that most of us only perceive after the fact, if at all. The result of this tardiness ranges from failed marriages to bankruptcy, from bad deals on new cars to closets full of unused items, from unread books to unused exercise machines.

A perception of value is driven by factors other than logic and the result is cost.

In Arizona this week at the Barrett Jackson battleground cost and value are fighting it out in their never ending struggle.