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To: sitetest
Well, going by your criteria, nothing is provable and we're all back to square one.

If it were me, and if I got a ridiculous low-ball offer (you dispute all the "ifs" so I don't know why I bother to finish this sentence), I'd tell them to go to Hell and they can't have the artifact at any price. I'd rather burn it. End of line.

Have a nice day.

64 posted on 10/17/2013 3:02:22 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty (We're At That Awkward Stage: It's too late to vote them out, too early to shoot the bastards.)
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To: Cyber Liberty
Dear Cyber Liberty,

Well, if it were me, and I knew I was being low-balled, I'd just laugh. Then, we'd proceed from there.

If I didn't get satisfaction, I'd look for other bidders. Frankly, I'd be doing that, anyway. If I got a higher bid, and the low-ball bidder wanted to top the higher bid, all things being equal, I'd take it.

I'm certainly not going to cut off my nose to spite my face.

I've owned my own businesses for nearly 30 years. If I got mad and stormed off, refusing to do business with the other party, every time someone gave me a low offer on the value of what I was trying to sell, I'd be mighty poor.

This guy, apparently, is trying to play the angles. And what I see is an attempt to get the highest actual bidder to go higher through bad publicity. Here are the clues:

“Several museums and Harvard University itself expressed a keen interest in the historically significant 140-year-old Greener documents.”

Okay, there are at least a handful of institutions interested in the stuff. One institution bought the part they thought was particularly valuable, and left the rest.

But then the article says:

“McDonald — who recently sold just two of the documents for $52,000 to the University of South Carolina, where Greener also studied and taught — is threatening to torch the rest unless Harvard offers him more cash.”

He's not saying he's going to torch the stuff if no one else offers more than Harvard has offered, but rather he's going to torch the stuff if HARVARD doesn't offer more than Harvard has offered.

That strongly suggests to me that Harvard has made the highest offer for the material that remains. Because, if someone else from the other institutions had offered more money than Harvard, I'm not sure this article would have ever even been written.

And lo and behold, here's an excerpt from an article on the fellow from 2012:

"Rufus McDonald says he's talked to plenty of people, including archivists and other experts, about the value of what he's found, but he's been disappointed so far in their offers. He says he can't afford to donate the documents, so he's looking for a buyer with deep pockets."

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/23/151227283/discovery-sparks-interest-in-forgotten-black-scholar

I guess that's just too damned bad for Mr. McDonald. That's how markets work - interested buyers make their offers, the seller gets to choose the offer that is most appealing to him. If none are sufficiently appealing, and no one is willing to up their price, well, then, there's just not going to be a sale.

I'll go back to what I originally said - it doesn't matter at what value your stuff is appraised. It's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

I hope Harvard withdraws their offer and tells Mr. McDonald to shove it where the sun doesn't shine. He's already made over $50K on something that almost literally fell into his lap. There are offers on the table from several other institutions for more of the material, but their offers don't suit him. So, he tries to embarrass the likely highest bidder into going higher, threatening to burn the docs because no one will pay him the amount he wants. Looks like a common grifter to me.


sitetest

65 posted on 10/17/2013 4:18:13 PM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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