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Comment by justusw | Hacker News Reader

There is a great episode on Planet Money about Strads and other objects that have a high perceived value due to the history and branding that come with them.

They cite the same 2012 Indianapolis study mentioned in this article. The researchers have an amazing eye for detail. A perfume was applied to all violin's chin rests so that musicians would not be able to tell them apart based on smell. Tells you a lot about brand perception using all our senses.

This is the Planet Money episode: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/06/22/482936331/episo...

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Planet money's coverage is great; I think a bunch of the posts below would be answered by listening to the podcast.

One of the main things I remember taking away from the podcast was that the soloists in the study were not the most famous "best" violinists in the world (they may not even have been professionals?). One of the violin makers they interviewed thought this was the biggest weakness of the study, and he was confident he could tell the difference (not that that means too much).

similar to say katanas - best hand-made today are probably better than best of the past (after few hundred centuries steel is not the same, even if blade was very well taken care of). yet old preserved blades are priced as luxury collectibles, not only due to interest of various anime watchers. and all they do is to collect dust on somebody's wall

Yep, just like all the most-capable and beautiful cars in the world which sit in private collections not being driven. At least violins get played for the most part :)

I always thought it'd be depressing to be a Ferrari engineer or in a similar position of making things great when you know the most of them will never be used anywhere near their potential, or worst-case never used and hoarded for profit by rich investors collecting trinkets they know little about. You're also undoubtedly aware of the types of buyers who e.g. Get a LaFerrari crash it on the turn exiting the dealership ( http://m.sfgate.com/world/article/1-5-million-Ferrari-wrecke... ) . IMO that would make it hard to care about my work, knowing that wholly-underserving drivers are smashing these functional works of art. Just because you can afford one of the fastest vehicles out there doesn't mean you're at all qualified to drive it.

There's a certain moment in the game Cave Story where you can come back to the gunsmith who you stole your initial weapon from. He begins by being irritated at you, but then notices that the weapon has collected obvious signs of being extremely thoroughly-used. This cheers him up, and he repairs/upgrades the gun and returns it to you.

Cave Story has a Japanese author, and Japan more generally seems to think quite a bit about how tools are treated over their "lives." I'm not sure if there's a specific term in Japanese for the particular sensation of "knowing that your craftsmanship is being put to use." But there is the concept of a tsukumogami—a tool that has had so much use put into it for so long that it has become imbued with its own soul. Such objects are sometimes given funerals when they break, etc.

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