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Should I make my friends pay??

^ I have to agree. If I had a card worth $5000 and wanted to show it to my friend, I would tell him to either wipe off his hands first, or I wouldn't take it out of the protective cover I would keep it in at all times. I wouldn't just be passing it around like a picture of me with the Chicago Bulls mascot.
 
Fjones said:
I pay $50 for a baseball card. It rises in value to $5000.00 (it could be SOLD for this amount to any card dealer). A friend carelessly extinguishes a cigarette on it while looking at it.

You think it is wrong to ask the friend to pay more than $50?

(Obviously he should have the card insured. This is a hypothetical scenario).
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I think it is wrong to ask the friend for more than $50. One would only have paid $50 so therefore they would only be out-of-pocket $50, regardless of how much it could have been worth.
In such a situation I wouldn't ask for any money at all, just like the original situation we've been talking about! But that's my opinion :)

leila762 said:
I would like to apologise for posting snide comments early on in this thread.
My only mitigating factor would be that on joining Bluelight, i stuck very much to the Lounge & wrongly thought it set the tone for all forums here.
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No harm done leila :)
 
OK, wow, you are all COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT. Let me try again, with very few specifics so that people actually address the issue, and not get caught up in unimportant details.

Someone has an item for which he has paid $50 but CAN BE SOLD AT ANY TIME FOR $500 (I reduced the amount to make this more plausible). So, this is not a case of "could have been worth $500," it IS WORTH $500.

Now, a friend comes over and requests to view / touch / see said item.

Person says, Uh, ok, but this is worth $500, please be careful.

Friend then damages said item while looking at it because of a careless action.


Am I really the only one who thinks the friend should replace the card? THIS IS RIDICULOUS.
If someone burns down my 90 year old house, is it wrong for me to collect $200,000 when my family only paid $3000 for it back in 1907? Where is the logic in this reasoning?

Granted, the Person's ability to pay should be a factor. If he cannot pay $500, he cannot pay $500. But how is it wrong for the person to collect $500 if the friend can afford to pay it?
 
We weren't missing the point, we just don't agree with you.

If the owner has said to the friend, 'please be careful' then I'd be more likely to sympathise with the owner. If the friend has damaged the item due to carelessness, rather than just due to an accident that could've happened to anyone, that also changes the issue slightly (not saying you didn't point out the carelessness factor in your first example.) However, this is where we differ. Your outlay was $50. Essentially that is all you've invested in the item. IF you had sold the card you would've made a profit of $4950. Our argument is that unless you value money higher than you value friendship, you would want your friend to reimburse you for your outlay, but not for any perceived or actual profit. It's an unfortunate loss, but I guess it would teach the person to take better care of their property and perhaps not let a baseball card worth $5000 be passed around.

Once again, this is only my opinion about what I would expect from my friends, and I'm not saying it's wrong to request actual value, just that it's not something I would do.

I see your point with the house example, but if you own a house and don't have insurance, then the only person you can blame is yourself. Anything of any worth should be insured against theft or damage. It would be easy to point the finger at the person who damaged it, but at the end of the day it's YOUR property. Accidents/ incidents happen - insure your shit and this wouldn't be an issue.
 
I hear what you are saying. I didn't mean to distort the facts by changing the information. I was just trying to eliminate "clutter" that seemed to causing us to get hung up on details.

I agree about insurance for expensive items.

The primary reason I gave the second example is that I wanted to highlight the cost vs. replacement value debate.

Why should cost be the deciding factor in how much someone pays to replace something? Why not replacement value?

Let's use a more trivial example. If I buy something on sale for $30 bucks, and then a week later no store is selling it cheaper than $50, and a friend breaks it, shouldn't he buy me a new one? Why should he give me $30 and say, "That's what you paid for it?"
 
^^ IMO he should buy you a new one for $50 (and the extra $20 that it costs now should not even be an issue),
OR give you the $30 you spent out of your own money at the time ;)
 
n3ophy7e said:
^^ IMO he should buy you a new one for $50 OR give you the $30 you spent out of your own money at the time ;)
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ok. NOW I think we are getting somewhere. I understand where you are all coming from.

Yes, it would be wrong to accept $50 and POCKET it. He should get either $30 CASH, or a replacement item (however the person wishes to go about obtaining it).

In the case of the OP and the antique, it would be wrong to collect hundreds of dollars and pocket it. But what if he intends to use the hundreds of dollars to actually buy a replacement? Isn't that acceptable? I don't think that would be ripping off his friends, as he is simply trying to restore his belongings to the previously existing state.
 
Yes, it would be wrong to accept $50 and POCKET it
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Thats why I had asked if he was able and planning on actually replacing the broken piece. It seemed like money was more of an issue than the fact that it was of sentimental value which is irreplaceable
 
If it is irreplaceable and has sentimental value, he should collect the cost ($80 or whatever) and buy something to replace it. Then, the new piece will be a tribute to the old piece; and, the new piece will become a treasured sentimental item in time.
 
You can totally tell from the responses in this thread which people have nice things and which people are poor.
 
Are those two mutually exclusive?

What if one caused the other?
 
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