Have you been following the economics of this country recently?
Guess who was invited to President Trump’s private event for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday and given a White House tour on Friday?
I wasn’t!
I called my friends, Peter, Belinda and Liza, to see if they had been part of this same oversight by the President.
Peter, Belinda and Liza and I were neighbors during our middle school years and have been friends ever since for over 60 years, and all of us were there from the beginning of cryptocurrency.
They weren’t invited either!
We concluded that this oversight by the President was not his fault and was due to only one possible interpretation.
Our President does not know a lot of American history or, to be a little more polite, he has not yet become aware of the true history of cryptocurrency.
As the rest of us already know, cryptocurrency was quietly created after Nixon took the country off the gold standard. Quite conveniently, it was the same time the first Topps baseball cards were issued in five-card packs with a card size slab of bubblegum included.
The retail cost was five cents per pack. A penny for each card and the bubblegum was free — age appropriate pre-pubescent genius marketing.
A half century before cryptocurrency entered the world stock market, Peter and I were both early investors in baseball cards, and then found another lucrative market in marble monopolies. We were early traders in pre-crypto middle school cards and marbles during recess.
Peter cornered the marble market so effectively that the marble market collapsed after he won all the marbles.
I tried to make a run on “big marbles” so I dressed up my little middle school self and went to pawn shops and antique stores looking for clear round door knobs.
Regrettably, no door knobs are completely round and thus valueless in the larger marble markets.
As a result — for the good of the market — Peter gave a written announcement handed out to the neighborhood that he would be emptying several boxes of marbles to the neighborhood market for free one late spring Saturday afternoon. It happened out of a second floor window with the driveway below. It was an early example of flooding the market.
Peter emptied five bankers boxes of multi currency marbles, including “puresy boulders” and several stunning “jumbo spirals.” The market was saved and Peter had made recess fun again.
Baseball cards back then were “to die for,” particularly if you had a complete set. Peter had a complete set of baseball cards for the years 1957, 1958, and 1959.
Even in middle school, you knew these people were serious people! Peter was a born collector and became a well known New York art dealer. Liza became a respected museum curator in Washington DC, and Belinda became a brilliant art writer and critic.
In the alternative, when I went off to college, my mother emptied my closets and threw away all of my marbles and baseball cards… and I became a lawyer.
At the same time as Trump’s cryptocurrency banquet and tour of the White House, his administration announced that they would be retiring the penny because it was not cost-effective to produce it anymore. They had determined that it took four cents to produce a penny. Think about the appreciated value of just one card, bought for a penny. Or even better, a complete set.
Ever since Nixon took us off the gold standard, our currency, stocks and bonds, like cryptocurrency, have no value other than the theoretical value according to the market.
However, with marbles and baseball cards, unlike cryptocurrency, there is the added component of artistic beauty. They are self valuing and hold a valuable historical record on the flip side of the picture — batting average and stolen bases and other stats.
Also, the bubble gum is great for the dental economy.
Hold onto your baseball cards and don’t lose your marbles!