But I still stand by that statement. I never said 
(or intended to imply) that it applied to all 
collectors. No one statement ever appiles to every
member of any given group. But it can't be denied 
that there comes a financial point at which "want"
doesn't mean squat. If I longed for a cel priced 
at $10,000 it wouldn't matter at all how much I 
wanted it -- the cold hard fact is that I do not 
have $10,000 to spend, irregardless of what I 
wanted to spend it on. If I needed $10,000 for 
something other people recognized as essential 
(say, medical care) then perhaps I would be able 
to find a financial institution to lend the 
money. But no one is going to lend $10,000 to buy 
a cel. If someone wants to spend that much on a 
cel, they're (rightly!) on their own.

And saying that someone is "rolling in money" is 
a relative statement. There are people who have 
so much more free money than I do, that (to me) 
they're rolling in money. To someone else who 
doesn't have as much as I do, I look to be the one
rolling in money, even though I definitely feel I 
am NOT. ^_^;; To some poor person on the street 
who doesn't even have enough to buy a shirt for 
their back, WE ALL look wealthy because we're 
able to blow even a single dollar on something 
essentially worthless.

Money pays for things people want. The amount of 
money that any one person has access to absolutely
does NOT define either *what* that person wants 
or *how much* they want the thing in question.

Sometimes it does seem to work that way. A cel
comes up for auction of a character that normally 
goes for, say, $50. Let's say I'm a diehard fan 
of the character, plus the cel is from the 
awesome scene when s/he does this-or-that. Wow! 
So I'm willing to bid $150 on it. Other bidders 
against me try: one for $40 (who walks away 
thinking "eh, it would have been cool to get it 
cheap"), one for $60 (who walks away thinking "did
this character suddenly become popular? I'll go 
for the next one"), and one for $120 (who walks 
away thinking "damn! I thought *I* was a fan, but 
I'm not paying *that*. . . this girl is insane!")
Maybe of the four of us, I really was the one who 
wanted it the most.

BUT JUST AS EASILY. . . .

A cel comes up for auction and some poor but avid 
and loyal fan is dying to have it. Said fan might 
put up every single dime they have to try to win 
it, plus borrow a couple bucks from their kid 
sister. But if every dime they have only amounts 
to (for exmaple) $30, and I have hundreds at my 
disposal, I can just as easily say: "Gee, I have 
no idea where this comes from but it looks good 
with my couch" and take the cel for $35. The sad 
thing is, it's rare for me to think twice about 
spending $30-$40 on a cel. Yet I *KNOW* to some 
people, that's a big splurge which needs to be 
planned for in advance. So I win the cel and 
stick it over my couch where I glance at it once 
in a while, while the other person (who would 
have stared at it for untold hours and proudly 
crowed about it to everyone they know) cries in a 
corner -- all for nothing more than not being 
able to pay the most for it.

Both those examples happen on a daily basis in 
this hobby, so I don't see how anyone can rightly 
say that money is the deciding factor. If money 
were the deciding factor, the outcome of *either* 
auction could have been different. For the first, 
maybe the person who bid $120 did actually want 
it a little more than I did, but was raised to be 
more frugal, or didn't happen to a little extra 
from watching the neighbor's cat, etc, and that 
was the real reason I won. For the second the avid
and loyal fan would have taken the prize over me. 

The money is rarely the deciding factor because 
we all come from different walks of life, with 
corresponding different financial reserves. It 
doesn't matter where you are on the financial 
ladder, because no matter what you do, there will 
nearly ALWAYS be someone both above you looking 
down. . . AND below you gazing up.

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac