What's My Old Stiff Worth?

What’s My Old Stuff Worth? ©

By Michael Casey

Today I heard on the news that Harry Potter writer’s desk and chair were for sale, the ones she used when writing the 1^st two Harry Potter books. Such is fame, the bottom sat here and notebook or was it typewriter was there. Obviously you think I’m jealous, but if you know me, then you know I’m not, cos I’m an Altruist first and foremost.

I do still have the varnished old barn chair with the missing back and the old tall stool with the red top that I used to write The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker on. I sat on the chair and balanced the typewriter on top on the stool, while I shivered in front of the old gas fire. It took maybe 4 months to write my first novel, when I finished I decided on one thing, to buy double glazing, as I was freezing.

I think my sister has the old typewriter somewhere, I think it was green in colour, I had learnt to type in 1978 when I 1^st became a computer operator, don’t forget men didn’t type in those days, just girls who worked in offices. I can remember flicking my fingers at  the bus stop while I tried to memorise where all the keys were.

Now nearly 40 years on I’m still typing and writing, I’ve gone through 850,000 words now over 9 books. So the question is would you pay big money for where my big bum sat and where I balanced my typewriter. I think my words are far funnier than JK’s but they haven’t been turned into major motion pictures, yet. Though I did get a film producer ask for a treatment once, just as I did get a theatre say they’d produce a play of mine, and radio did like my stuff too, and commissioning editors have said I’ve made them laugh out loud.

So with this in mind, with my twerking butt sat writing would that increase the value of my old chair, and how much for my stooles, I mean stool, though Americans would buy anything.  Could I sell my nail clippings and my beard that I’ve just shaved off.

What exactly has to happen before anything becomes valuable? You could mass produce items and say they were this and that and fleece people, just as some artists do. So what gives value to anything? The actual value, such as the weight of an ounce of gold, or the Magna Carta because of its value in History and the fact that there is only one.

Pop Art mass produces things, but still can sell for high numbers, but does that make it any good. We can say look at the numbers but still something is rubbish, sales and taste and value are very different things, very different things.

A bench in a park can be priceless, that was where your grandparents first met, that was where your mum dropped a handkerchief and your dad picket it up, then in Victoria Park Smethwick they first spoke, sitting on that bench.

Silly little things in even stupider places can and do make a difference in all our lives. Walking home with a new toilet seat hanging from your neck may have been how you first met your best girl. You made her laugh, so you became an item so she loaned you money to open that garage, now you drive her around in a Bentley, and all because of a toilet seat.

My mother was given an old wooded pink stained coat hanger when she left Kerry in Feb 1944, when we broke it 24 years later she cried, before hitting us with it, before we glued it back together. Her mother had given it to her, it was the only thing they could give, they were poor and that was all the parting gift they could give.

o when you are bidding for JK Rowling’s chair and desk, or even my stool and barn chair in my dreams, then think about something of far far greater value, an old pink stained coat hanger, and not my 50 shades of grey hair.