“Just for grins, I ran a correlation on the buying/selling price. Nothing there – at 0.15, there’s virtually no correlation. So, it must be the stories!”

Jules, these factors you mention — yes! Keep ‘em coming.

For me the value of the object would be about 15% the appeal of the object itself and 85% the impact of the writing. I bought two books as a result of this project, having learned about it only a week before it came to an end.

Thanks for making a mug available! The mug would have no significance were it not for this project, and the writing it gave us.

You clearly need an expensive psychiatrist to analyze the data against contemporary visual iconography, cultural currency, fragile psyches, adult hipster peer pressure trends, etc.

Separately (and seriously), I was also attracted to the objects with short or graphic stories because I would have displayed them together with the S.O. I wanted them to fit neatly in a small frame or shadow box.

Alas I was a loser-Loser-LOSER in all my bids.

And here’s another factor: we ended up recruiting slightly more men than women — I think it’s a 57/43 split. Dang — it would have made our analysis that much easier if we’d recruited 50/50 instead.

But what, if anything, can we learn from this first table? Something this table helps me realize: its starting price might seem to play an important role in determining an object’s final price. Only one of our 10 initially least expensive items — that is, the Fake Banana — made it onto the Top 10 list of final prices. However, when you look at our 10 initially most expensive items you find that four of them — Cape Cod Shoe, Russian Figure, Metal Boot, “Hawk” Ashtray — made it onto the Top 10 list of final prices, while a fifth item from the Top 10 list of final prices (the Fish Spoons) is tied for our 11th initially most expensive item.