CDZ Some Thoughts on Price, Value and Worth

[Leo123]

Price is the value placed on an item by the seller. Worth is the monetary value PAID for that item by a buyer in an arm's length transaction. That's the way I see it.

I think 'worth' as a word goes way beyond merely monetary compensation for a thing.

The value of a hardened courageous soldier 'can prove his worth' but not his price.

The Hope Diamond is truly priceless due to its history and not just the fact it is a blue diamond of large size.

There is a worth people place on things due to historical context, religious faith or technological design.

Well, you presented price, value and worth. Those are best associated with the market where items or property are priced, marketed and sold.

 

[Leo123]

Calling something worthless gives it a value.

If an item is put up for sale with a price of $0, it is worthless except as an incentive perhaps to get something else.

But the shotgun that has been in my family for five generations and I plan on it going to a 6th and 7th generation even more, it is priceless because it has a null price as it is n ot and never will be for sale.

A thing that is not measured has a null measure, n ot a zero measure. The same goes with price for something never to be sold.

No that shotgun is not priceless on an open market because no one would put the emotional value to it that you do. Now, I'm not saying that that artifact is not priceless to you and your family, of course it is as it represents something a lot deeper than a sale price.

 

[Markle]

worth noun
\ ˈwərth \
Definition of worth (Entry 1 of 4)
1a: monetary value
farmhouse and lands of little worth
b: the equivalent of a specified amount or figure
a dollar's worth of gas
2: the value of something measured by its qualities or by the esteem in which it is held
a literary heritage of great worth
3a: moral or personal value
trying to teach human worth
b: merit, excellence
a field in which we have proved our worth

value noun
val·ue | \ ˈval-(ˌ)yü\
Definition of value (Entry 1 of 2)
1: the monetary worth of something : market price
2: a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
3: relative worth, utility, or importance
a good value at the price
the value of base stealing in baseball
had nothing of value to say
4: something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable
sought material values instead of human values
— W. H. Jones
5: a numerical quantity that is assigned or is determined by calculation or measurement
let x take on positive values
a value for the age of the earth
6: the relative duration of a musical note
7a: relative lightness or darkness of a color : luminosity
b: the relation of one part in a picture to another with respect to lightness and darkness

price noun
\ ˈprīs \
Definition of price (Entry 1 of 3)
1 archaic : value, worth
2a: the quantity of one thing that is exchanged or demanded in barter or sale for another
b: the amount of money given or set as consideration for the sale of a specified thing
3: the terms for the sake of which something is done or undertaken: such as
a: an amount sufficient to bribe one
believed every man had his price
b: a reward for the apprehension or death of a person
an outlaw with a price on his head
4: the cost at which something is obtained
the price of freedom is restraint
— J. Irwin Miller

We live in a stupid, lazy Age of Convenience and no less so when it comes to the precise meaning and nuance of words. The words 'worth', 'value' and 'price' used to have different nuance in meaning, but our Age of Great Stupidity is dumbing down everything to the point that one day all words will have the same meaning and what they would mean at any given time would depend instead on context and will be of no more intelligence than a grunt accompanied by a finger point.

But I want to look at these three words in terms of the economic meaning and import, and try to pull some nuance of meaning out of our current Great Mire of Stupidity.

I have read a little bit about the 'fair price' of a thing in economics and it really seems to me we are talking about three different things on the whole; worth, price and value. To do that I must make an analogy.

When I got out of the Army back in '83, one of the first things I did was to go to some garage sales to get some basic things, like a belt, pocket knife, comb, etc. this is far cheaper than buying things at a Good Will store, and I had like $50 total to my name at the time. I found this pocket knife that had a Damascus steel blade, nickel silver end pieces and Walnut scales.

The lady only wanted 25 cents for it. It had belonged to her husband and he had passed away, so she was getting rid of all his things. I told her the pocket knife was worth a lot more than 25 cents, the Damascus steel alone would be well worth more. She said that in that case she would take 50 cents for it.

I felt uncomfortable buying the knife for so little. I felt like I was exploiting her emotional desire to be rid of her husbands memories, or what ever the case, to get a good buy, so I said I would not pay less than $5 for it, as I couldn't find it a comfortable purchase in terms of living with my conscience to pay less than $5. She agreed to sell it for a dollar and she did not want my charity, so I bought it for $1, and eased my mind that I did try to make a fair buy.

I have never tried to argue up a persons price for a thing before so that I would pay more for it, and have only done it once since then, talked a guy up from $100 for a car to $300 because the car's Blue Book at the time was around $3000 and there was really nothing seriously wrong with it, just a lot of paint oxidation and the oil needed changing. But the pocket knife experience got me to thinking more about the difference between the price of a thing, its value and its worth.

Now if one is content to treat them as all synonymous with each other, then fine, go play in the great Mire some more, but I think that there is a functional difference in nuance that is worth maintaining and helps to alleviate some of the confusion about what the price of a thing is vrs its value or its worth.

Adam Smith I think it was came up with the water-diamond paradox of value. Water has more utility than diamonds but diamonds fetch a much higher price than water per ounce. So this is a well recognized and long debated topic, and here is my take.

The price of a thing is whatever it is currently being sold for, so in the case of my knife it was finally a $1. The value of the thing after that was probably about $50 to get me to sell it, though the price was $0 because I really needed it and wasn't trying to sell it. The worth was more than that because to get a hand made knife with a Damascus steel blade to replace it would cost around $200 at the time IF you could find someone willing to do the work and you gave him the materials.

Today we have a lot of Etsy marketers of handmade items so a similar knife now could be bought for probably $30, but I wouldn't sell the knife for that because the sentimental value is much higher to me.

So to draw some points of discussion from all that I get:
1) Price, value and worth are all dynamic, Price being much more so, and value being more subjective. Worth I think points to a more abstract quality that suggests a common community exchange rate. A thing that is priceless is worth a great deal, but a thing that is worthless has a price of $0 unless you can find a sucker.

2) While you might sell a broken brass clock for a $5 price to some Third World person who likes shiny things, It is of considerably less value as a clock, unless you can repair it, and its worth might be whatever the materials in it sells for to a buyer. The three things seem to be different in nature from one to the other.

3) While Price is whatever you can barter for a thing, and value is the cost of acquiring it that you wouldn't go less than, the worth is more abstract and suggests a more universal exchange rate for the item. A cheap $5 pick axe might sell for $1000 in a gold rush, but what would it sell for in Manhatten? I would think barely more than the cost of making it. But what is it worth in Manhatten if there is not use for it other than occasional subway work? \

I would say the price for the axe sold in a gold rush is more than the price it fetches in Manhatten, but price is what you can get for a particular thing in a particular place, value is more of a typical normative price in each locale, and worth is what the abstract bearer is willing to part with a thing universally.

Hence a 'priceless' thing is of huge 'worth', as there is no price the owner is willing to take in exchange for it, and it is not worthless at all, and its 'value' is transitory depending on the locale market and what the average offer for it would be.

What do you all think about the topic? Are the difference in nuance worth keeping and does it shed any light on the economics of price?

With all due respect.

If your game involves real estate, there are three methods used to evaluate a property. Cost. Value. Price. No such thing as "worth".

Cost, obvious. What it costs to create. What the house cost to build or what the toothbrush cost for the retailer to buy.

Value is what a consensus is that someone will pay. In real estate, that would be a certified appraisal or a brokers opinion of value. With the toothbrush, the price the retailer assigns.

Price is the dollars someone is willing to pay.

I'm a bottom line sort of guy so, what is your bottom line. What are you asking?

 

[badger2]

Architects Know That The Rotting Process of the City is from the Center to the Periphery

'Some white Milwaukeeans still referred to the North Side as "the core," as they did in the 1960s, and if they ventured into it, they saw street after street of sagging duplexes, fading murals, twenty-four-hour day cares, and corner stores with WIC Accepted Here signs. Once America's eleventh-largest city, Milwaukee's population had fallen below 600,000, down from 740,000 in 1960. It showed. Abandoned properties and weedy lots where homes once stood dotted the North Side.
....
Sherenna saw all this, but she saw something else too. Like other seasoned landlords, she knew who owned which multifamily, which church, which bar, which street; knew its different vicissitudes of life, its shakes and moods; knew which blocks were hot and drug-soaked and which were stable and quiet. She knew the ghetto's value and how money could be made from property that looked worthless to people who didn't know any better.'
(Desmond M, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)

 

[JimBowie1958]

worth noun
\ ˈwərth \
Definition of worth (Entry 1 of 4)
1a: monetary value
farmhouse and lands of little worth
b: the equivalent of a specified amount or figure
a dollar's worth of gas
2: the value of something measured by its qualities or by the esteem in which it is held
a literary heritage of great worth
3a: moral or personal value
trying to teach human worth
b: merit, excellence
a field in which we have proved our worth

value noun
val·ue | \ ˈval-(ˌ)yü\
Definition of value (Entry 1 of 2)
1: the monetary worth of something : market price
2: a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
3: relative worth, utility, or importance
a good value at the price
the value of base stealing in baseball
had nothing of value to say
4: something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable
sought material values instead of human values
— W. H. Jones
5: a numerical quantity that is assigned or is determined by calculation or measurement
let x take on positive values
a value for the age of the earth
6: the relative duration of a musical note
7a: relative lightness or darkness of a color : luminosity
b: the relation of one part in a picture to another with respect to lightness and darkness

price noun
\ ˈprīs \
Definition of price (Entry 1 of 3)
1 archaic : value, worth
2a: the quantity of one thing that is exchanged or demanded in barter or sale for another
b: the amount of money given or set as consideration for the sale of a specified thing
3: the terms for the sake of which something is done or undertaken: such as
a: an amount sufficient to bribe one
believed every man had his price
b: a reward for the apprehension or death of a person
an outlaw with a price on his head
4: the cost at which something is obtained
the price of freedom is restraint
— J. Irwin Miller

We live in a stupid, lazy Age of Convenience and no less so when it comes to the precise meaning and nuance of words. The words 'worth', 'value' and 'price' used to have different nuance in meaning, but our Age of Great Stupidity is dumbing down everything to the point that one day all words will have the same meaning and what they would mean at any given time would depend instead on context and will be of no more intelligence than a grunt accompanied by a finger point.

But I want to look at these three words in terms of the economic meaning and import, and try to pull some nuance of meaning out of our current Great Mire of Stupidity.

I have read a little bit about the 'fair price' of a thing in economics and it really seems to me we are talking about three different things on the whole; worth, price and value. To do that I must make an analogy.

When I got out of the Army back in '83, one of the first things I did was to go to some garage sales to get some basic things, like a belt, pocket knife, comb, etc. this is far cheaper than buying things at a Good Will store, and I had like $50 total to my name at the time. I found this pocket knife that had a Damascus steel blade, nickel silver end pieces and Walnut scales.

The lady only wanted 25 cents for it. It had belonged to her husband and he had passed away, so she was getting rid of all his things. I told her the pocket knife was worth a lot more than 25 cents, the Damascus steel alone would be well worth more. She said that in that case she would take 50 cents for it.

I felt uncomfortable buying the knife for so little. I felt like I was exploiting her emotional desire to be rid of her husbands memories, or what ever the case, to get a good buy, so I said I would not pay less than $5 for it, as I couldn't find it a comfortable purchase in terms of living with my conscience to pay less than $5. She agreed to sell it for a dollar and she did not want my charity, so I bought it for $1, and eased my mind that I did try to make a fair buy.

I have never tried to argue up a persons price for a thing before so that I would pay more for it, and have only done it once since then, talked a guy up from $100 for a car to $300 because the car's Blue Book at the time was around $3000 and there was really nothing seriously wrong with it, just a lot of paint oxidation and the oil needed changing. But the pocket knife experience got me to thinking more about the difference between the price of a thing, its value and its worth.

Now if one is content to treat them as all synonymous with each other, then fine, go play in the great Mire some more, but I think that there is a functional difference in nuance that is worth maintaining and helps to alleviate some of the confusion about what the price of a thing is vrs its value or its worth.

Adam Smith I think it was came up with the water-diamond paradox of value. Water has more utility than diamonds but diamonds fetch a much higher price than water per ounce. So this is a well recognized and long debated topic, and here is my take.

The price of a thing is whatever it is currently being sold for, so in the case of my knife it was finally a $1. The value of the thing after that was probably about $50 to get me to sell it, though the price was $0 because I really needed it and wasn't trying to sell it. The worth was more than that because to get a hand made knife with a Damascus steel blade to replace it would cost around $200 at the time IF you could find someone willing to do the work and you gave him the materials.

Today we have a lot of Etsy marketers of handmade items so a similar knife now could be bought for probably $30, but I wouldn't sell the knife for that because the sentimental value is much higher to me.

So to draw some points of discussion from all that I get:
1) Price, value and worth are all dynamic, Price being much more so, and value being more subjective. Worth I think points to a more abstract quality that suggests a common community exchange rate. A thing that is priceless is worth a great deal, but a thing that is worthless has a price of $0 unless you can find a sucker.

2) While you might sell a broken brass clock for a $5 price to some Third World person who likes shiny things, It is of considerably less value as a clock, unless you can repair it, and its worth might be whatever the materials in it sells for to a buyer. The three things seem to be different in nature from one to the other.

3) While Price is whatever you can barter for a thing, and value is the cost of acquiring it that you wouldn't go less than, the worth is more abstract and suggests a more universal exchange rate for the item. A cheap $5 pick axe might sell for $1000 in a gold rush, but what would it sell for in Manhatten? I would think barely more than the cost of making it. But what is it worth in Manhatten if there is not use for it other than occasional subway work? \

I would say the price for the axe sold in a gold rush is more than the price it fetches in Manhatten, but price is what you can get for a particular thing in a particular place, value is more of a typical normative price in each locale, and worth is what the abstract bearer is willing to part with a thing universally.

Hence a 'priceless' thing is of huge 'worth', as there is no price the owner is willing to take in exchange for it, and it is not worthless at all, and its 'value' is transitory depending on the locale market and what the average offer for it would be.

What do you all think about the topic? Are the difference in nuance worth keeping and does it shed any light on the economics of price?

With all due respect.

If your game involves real estate, there are three methods used to evaluate a property. Cost. Value. Price. No such thing as "worth".

Cost, obvious. What it costs to create. What the house cost to build or what the toothbrush cost for the retailer to buy.

Value is what a consensus is that someone will pay. In real estate, that would be a certified appraisal or a brokers opinion of value. With the toothbrush, the price the retailer assigns.

Price is the dollars someone is willing to pay.

I'm a bottom line sort of guy so, what is your bottom line. What are you asking?

No such thing as 'worth'?

As in he has proved his worth or this diamond is worth a lot?

What I am getting at is what I am perceiving as slight nuances of use for these terms in common parlance of which real estate industry is not part of.

 

[JimBowie1958]

[Q
No that shotgun is not priceless on an open market because no one would put the emotional value to it that you do.

It is never going on the market, hence it will never have a price, not now, not ever and therefore it is indeed priceless.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Well, you presented price, value and worth. Those are best associated with the market where items or property are priced, marketed and sold.

I think that ios part of what I am driving at.

Not everything of worth has a price.

Not everything of value is for sale.

 

[Markle]

No such thing as 'worth'?

As in he has proved his worth or this diamond is worth a lot?

What I am getting at is what I am perceiving as slight nuances of use for these terms in common parlance of which real estate industry is not part of.

Worth is not a working description of a property or a baseball bat when arriving at the objects price. The three terms I used to cover everything you described but with none of the ambiguities you are trying to assign.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Worth is not a working description of a property or a baseball bat when arriving at the objects price. .

Why do you presume we ar trying to arrive at a price?

What is the price of valor or love or integrity?

 

[Leo123]

Well, you presented price, value and worth. Those are best associated with the market where items or property are priced, marketed and sold.

I think that ios part of what I am driving at.

Not everything of worth has a price.

Not everything of value is for sale.

When you talk about value, price and worth you are (in my mind) describing a market where goods and services are priced, marketed and sold. Now you assign 'worth' to something that has no monetary worth because it will never be placed on the market. That is completely different IMO. Maybe I misunderstood?

Added: This is an interesting thread to me. I almost forgot that in antique appraisal there is such a thing as 'provenance.' Which is the chronology of ownership, history of item, etc. In the case of the gun, it's origins, history, etc. and whether or not it was say, in the hands of a prominent individual, whether it be famous or infamous, could possibly add to it's monetary value IF ever placed on the market.

 

[Markle]

Price is the value placed on an item by the seller. Worth is the monetary value PAID for that item by a buyer in an arm's length transaction. That's the way I see it.

I think 'worth' as a word goes way beyond merely monetary compensation for a thing.

The value of a hardened courageous soldier 'can prove his worth' but not his price.

The Hope Diamond is truly priceless due to its history and not just the fact it is a blue diamond of large size.

There is a worth people place on things due to historical context, religious faith or technological design.

The Hope Diamond is not priceless. It was bought and sold several times before it was donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Well, you presented price, value and worth. Those are best associated with the market where items or property are priced, marketed and sold.

I think that ios part of what I am driving at.

Not everything of worth has a price.

Not everything of value is for sale.

When you talk about value, price and worth you are (in my mind) describing a market where goods and services are priced, marketed and sold. Now you assign 'worth' to something that has no monetary worth because it will never be placed on the market. That is completely different IMO. Maybe I misunderstood?

Yes, I am tying together three threads:
1) the nuances of each word, price, value and worth to show that they are not exactly the same thing in their usage,
2) Not all uses of these words are dependent on a market price
3) I suspect that the various definitions of value and price are part of the problem in deriving an economic theory that is supposed to account for the derivation of price, but using the different terms in different ways we may not bear in mind as we discuss them.

Price represents the final exchange/barter for item in monetary terms, and I think a 'fair price', lol, is basically an attempt to ascertain a more normative *value* of the object in more than just the one market. IT is a more abstract thing that seems to suggest something alluded to that is less transient for a specific market/time/place.

Jesus once gave a parable of a 'Pearl of Great Value' and a merchant sold everything he had to buy that pearl. He probably had a buyer lined up for even more shekels, but Jesus was alluding to 'value' as in 'desire' or sought after, which is more akin to the use of the word 'worth', but 'Pearl of Great Worth' doesn't really flow off the tongue as well, does it?

 

[JimBowie1958]

Price is the value placed on an item by the seller. Worth is the monetary value PAID for that item by a buyer in an arm's length transaction. That's the way I see it.

I think 'worth' as a word goes way beyond merely monetary compensation for a thing.

The value of a hardened courageous soldier 'can prove his worth' but not his price.

The Hope Diamond is truly priceless due to its history and not just the fact it is a blue diamond of large size.

There is a worth people place on things due to historical context, religious faith or technological design.

The Hope Diamond is not priceless. It was bought and sold several times before it was donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

That was then, this is now.

Do you really think that the UK would sell the Hope Diamond TODAY?

No, it is priceless now as it is also a national treasure.

 

[JimBowie1958]

When you say "Brit" corporate are your referring to British CEOs? What do they care about American independence anyway?

Well, I was actually trying to refer to 'one's national independence' in general, not only the USA.

 

[Markle]

Worth is not a working description of a property or a baseball bat when arriving at the objects price. .

Why do you presume we ar trying to arrive at a price?

What is the price of valor or love or integrity?

Those are intangibles. You are trying to determine the difference between three different words. I provided the words and definitions that simplifies and solves the entire issue.

 

[Leo123]

Well, you presented price, value and worth. Those are best associated with the market where items or property are priced, marketed and sold.

I think that ios part of what I am driving at.

Not everything of worth has a price.

Not everything of value is for sale.

When you talk about value, price and worth you are (in my mind) describing a market where goods and services are priced, marketed and sold. Now you assign 'worth' to something that has no monetary worth because it will never be placed on the market. That is completely different IMO. Maybe I misunderstood?

Yes, I am tying together three threads:
1) the nuances of each word, price, value and worth to show that they are not exactly the same thing in their usage,
2) Not all uses of these words are dependent on a market price
3) I suspect that the various definitions of value and price are part of the problem in deriving an economic theory that is supposed to account for the derivation of price, but using the different terms in different ways we may not bear in mind as we discuss them.

Price represents the final exchange/barter for item in monetary terms, and I think a 'fair price', lol, is basically an attempt to ascertain a more normative value of the object in more than just the one market. IT is a more abstract thing that seems to suggest something alluded to that is less transient for a specific market/time/place.

Jesus once gave a parable of a 'Pearl of Great Value' and a merchant sold everything he had to buy that pearl. He probably had a buyer lined up for even more shekels, but Jesus was alluding to 'value' as in 'desire' or sought after, which is more akin to the use of the word 'worth', but 'Pearl of Great Worth' doesn't really flow off the tongue as well, does it?

Well, I consider the value of something to be what a buyer would pay for it in an 'arm's length' transaction. The price paid would the the item's worth right after the purchase. Now, the item may gain or decline in 'value' as the transaction ages depending on market forces.

 

[Markle]

Price is the value placed on an item by the seller. Worth is the monetary value PAID for that item by a buyer in an arm's length transaction. That's the way I see it.

I think 'worth' as a word goes way beyond merely monetary compensation for a thing.

The value of a hardened courageous soldier 'can prove his worth' but not his price.

The Hope Diamond is truly priceless due to its history and not just the fact it is a blue diamond of large size.

There is a worth people place on things due to historical context, religious faith or technological design.

The Hope Diamond is not priceless. It was bought and sold several times before it was donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

That was then, this is now.

Do you really think that the UK would sell the Hope Diamond TODAY?

No, it is priceless now as it is also a national treasure.

Why would the United Kingdom decide whether or not to sell the Diamond? It was donated to the Smithsonian many decades ago.

Whether or not it can be sold, it still has value.

 

[toobfreak]

worth noun
\ ˈwərth \
Definition of worth (Entry 1 of 4)
1a: monetary value
farmhouse and lands of little worth
b: the equivalent of a specified amount or figure
a dollar's worth of gas
2: the value of something measured by its qualities or by the esteem in which it is held
a literary heritage of great worth
3a: moral or personal value
trying to teach human worth
b: merit, excellence
a field in which we have proved our worth

value noun
val·ue | \ ˈval-(ˌ)yü\
Definition of value (Entry 1 of 2)
1: the monetary worth of something : market price
2: a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
3: relative worth, utility, or importance
a good value at the price
the value of base stealing in baseball
had nothing of value to say
4: something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable
sought material values instead of human values
— W. H. Jones
5: a numerical quantity that is assigned or is determined by calculation or measurement
let x take on positive values
a value for the age of the earth
6: the relative duration of a musical note
7a: relative lightness or darkness of a color : luminosity
b: the relation of one part in a picture to another with respect to lightness and darkness

price noun
\ ˈprīs \
Definition of price (Entry 1 of 3)
1 archaic : value, worth
2a: the quantity of one thing that is exchanged or demanded in barter or sale for another
b: the amount of money given or set as consideration for the sale of a specified thing
3: the terms for the sake of which something is done or undertaken: such as
a: an amount sufficient to bribe one
believed every man had his price
b: a reward for the apprehension or death of a person
an outlaw with a price on his head
4: the cost at which something is obtained
the price of freedom is restraint
— J. Irwin Miller

We live in a stupid, lazy Age of Convenience and no less so when it comes to the precise meaning and nuance of words. The words 'worth', 'value' and 'price' used to have different nuance in meaning, but our Age of Great Stupidity is dumbing down everything to the point that one day all words will have the same meaning and what they would mean at any given time would depend instead on context and will be of no more intelligence than a grunt accompanied by a finger point.

But I want to look at these three words in terms of the economic meaning and import, and try to pull some nuance of meaning out of our current Great Mire of Stupidity.

I have read a little bit about the 'fair price' of a thing in economics and it really seems to me we are talking about three different things on the whole; worth, price and value. To do that I must make an analogy.

When I got out of the Army back in '83, one of the first things I did was to go to some garage sales to get some basic things, like a belt, pocket knife, comb, etc. this is far cheaper than buying things at a Good Will store, and I had like $50 total to my name at the time. I found this pocket knife that had a Damascus steel blade, nickel silver end pieces and Walnut scales.

The lady only wanted 25 cents for it. It had belonged to her husband and he had passed away, so she was getting rid of all his things. I told her the pocket knife was worth a lot more than 25 cents, the Damascus steel alone would be well worth more. She said that in that case she would take 50 cents for it.

I felt uncomfortable buying the knife for so little. I felt like I was exploiting her emotional desire to be rid of her husbands memories, or what ever the case, to get a good buy, so I said I would not pay less than $5 for it, as I couldn't find it a comfortable purchase in terms of living with my conscience to pay less than $5. She agreed to sell it for a dollar and she did not want my charity, so I bought it for $1, and eased my mind that I did try to make a fair buy.

I have never tried to argue up a persons price for a thing before so that I would pay more for it, and have only done it once since then, talked a guy up from $100 for a car to $300 because the car's Blue Book at the time was around $3000 and there was really nothing seriously wrong with it, just a lot of paint oxidation and the oil needed changing. But the pocket knife experience got me to thinking more about the difference between the price of a thing, its value and its worth.

Now if one is content to treat them as all synonymous with each other, then fine, go play in the great Mire some more, but I think that there is a functional difference in nuance that is worth maintaining and helps to alleviate some of the confusion about what the price of a thing is vrs its value or its worth.

Adam Smith I think it was came up with the water-diamond paradox of value. Water has more utility than diamonds but diamonds fetch a much higher price than water per ounce. So this is a well recognized and long debated topic, and here is my take.

The price of a thing is whatever it is currently being sold for, so in the case of my knife it was finally a $1. The value of the thing after that was probably about $50 to get me to sell it, though the price was $0 because I really needed it and wasn't trying to sell it. The worth was more than that because to get a hand made knife with a Damascus steel blade to replace it would cost around $200 at the time IF you could find someone willing to do the work and you gave him the materials.

Today we have a lot of Etsy marketers of handmade items so a similar knife now could be bought for probably $30, but I wouldn't sell the knife for that because the sentimental value is much higher to me.

So to draw some points of discussion from all that I get:
1) Price, value and worth are all dynamic, Price being much more so, and value being more subjective. Worth I think points to a more abstract quality that suggests a common community exchange rate. A thing that is priceless is worth a great deal, but a thing that is worthless has a price of $0 unless you can find a sucker.

2) While you might sell a broken brass clock for a $5 price to some Third World person who likes shiny things, It is of considerably less value as a clock, unless you can repair it, and its worth might be whatever the materials in it sells for to a buyer. The three things seem to be different in nature from one to the other.

3) While Price is whatever you can barter for a thing, and value is the cost of acquiring it that you wouldn't go less than, the worth is more abstract and suggests a more universal exchange rate for the item. A cheap $5 pick axe might sell for $1000 in a gold rush, but what would it sell for in Manhatten? I would think barely more than the cost of making it. But what is it worth in Manhatten if there is not use for it other than occasional subway work? \

I would say the price for the axe sold in a gold rush is more than the price it fetches in Manhatten, but price is what you can get for a particular thing in a particular place, value is more of a typical normative price in each locale, and worth is what the abstract bearer is willing to part with a thing universally.

Hence a 'priceless' thing is of huge 'worth', as there is no price the owner is willing to take in exchange for it, and it is not worthless at all, and its 'value' is transitory depending on the locale market and what the average offer for it would be.

What do you all think about the topic? Are the difference in nuance worth keeping and does it shed any light on the economics of price?

It shows you to be a honest man of good conscience and integrity. Many would take these things for a penny and say nothing.

PRICE: the asking market cost.

VALUE:
WORTH: rather synonymous with whatever subjective meaning an item may hold for the buyer or seller.

 

[Ringel05]

When you say "Brit" corporate are your referring to British CEOs? What do they care about American independence anyway?

Well, I was actually trying to refer to 'one's national independence' in general, not only the USA.

There's other nations? Who knew?

 

[JimBowie1958]

Worth is not a working description of a property or a baseball bat when arriving at the objects price. .

Why do you presume we ar trying to arrive at a price?

What is the price of valor or love or integrity?

Those are intangibles. You are trying to determine the difference between three different words. I provided the words and definitions that simplifies and solves the entire issue.

I saw that, but I disagree. The nuances are worth keeping and using.