About as valuable as NFTs

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[–] 27 points 2 months ago (9 children)

The funny thing about it is that you can very much attach any value you want to anything, it's just a matter of how much reach your message has and how many people believe it. NFTs ended up crashing because eventually people realize they were worthless, but not before the snake oil salesmen racked in billions from them.

If an influencer with millions of followers sold a bunch of autumn leaves, someone would buy them.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Didn't that one broad sell her bath water or something? A fool and their money are soon parted.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Here we have them going for about 50¢ a leaf, which ain't bad. I'd like to go ahead and sell my yard... we have some really nice leaves folks

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Looks like all you need to do is clean them enough to be strewn on a dinner table, sort them by type, and press them flat to dry. Then pack them to ship safely to places without yards full of autumn leaves. Or you could just do a couple handfuls of the best ones and use them for your own table at Thanksgiving. An outdated old textbook is good for the pressing part, just separate the leaves by several pages and put another tome on top.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    People are stupid emotional creatures. They don't calmly evaluate if the thing is useful or practical. They see the in-group doing it and don't want to be left out.

    This was probably an advantage in pre-history. Our brains haven't kept up with our changing environment.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Thinking about it, I value this more than some shiny metal

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    Reminds me of Aluminium.

    • Literally everywhere since the dawn of time.
    • Impervious to fire, so couldn't smelt it for thousands of years.
    • Electricity invented, and can now separate small amounts of it
    • Worth more than gold, crown jewels made of it
    • Market valuation keeps increasing
    • New technique involving sodium allows us to extract large quantities of it
    • Market valuation nosedives to nothing in a single day
    • We use it to wrap food and drink cans with, and then we chuck it

    Can you imagine being an investor back then

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Only tangentially related, but I like this story

    https://www.scottsdalemint.com/articles/2024/the-hunt-brothers-how-two-billionaires-broke-the-silver-market/

    Tl;Dr two brothers tried to corner the silver market. Almost made it. Until they didn't.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Interesting read -- though my main takeaway is that even when you're billions of dollars in debt, you can still come out with your vast fortune because your estate is not touched by litigation. So they declared bankruptcy and still kept their millions in assets

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    Leaves are much rarer than gold, at least on a cosmic scale.

    So if an alien life form came to our planet looking to trade, then an autumn leaf could be seen as more valuable to them than gold.

    Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to invest heavily into timber so I can make money hand over fist on some aliens.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    That really strikes me as a B ark sort of idea.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Autumn leaves is the new e-girl bathwater

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    As someone who lives in New England on 3/4 of an acre surrounded by 60-ft trees, please let this be true

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    The only way this makes sense is if you think about the lack of autumn leaves nowadays because the leaves fall off because of draught before they can naturally do their autumn thing (as is now the case in Europe). A stable climate is worth money (gold).

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    This one has big Clickhole energy 😄🥰

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    On the other hand, most famous economists can shut the fuck up 🙂

    And if we're talkin' Autumn Leaves and gold: https://youtu.be/r-Z8KuwI7Gc

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Any objects value is always what the public makes it worth. That's why market speculation is a thing in the first place. Value always depends on trends. I would say a leaf could be worth a lot when there are no trees anymore or for collectors a leaf of a tree type that doesnt exist anymore but is preserved well.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I dunno, I see some gold leaf in the one on the left.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I've seen sticks and autumn leaves sold in bags at my local supermarket.

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