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> but there's only so much time in life to hoard useless shit

There’s this very strange episode of the original run of the series Amazing Stories starring Mark Hamill in which some sort of gnome whom only he can see follows him around telling him that the most important thing in life is hoarding toys. He spends his life homeless, hauling his toys around in a shopping cart, completely alone in the world. When he’s like 80 years old and literally planning his suicide, a wealthy collector bumps into him on the street and buys his toys and he becomes rich overnight, and the episode ends with old Mark Hamill and old gnome dressed like rich folk, apparently very happy with themselves and giving off an “it was all worth it” vibe.

Even childhood me, who was very into this tv show (the introduction to which featured computer animation!), Steven Spielberg, toys, and Mark Hamill – even that young version of myself could see this was a terrible message.

https://youtu.be/Hbn5cNgEzKA

It reminds me of the stories of old where a person has great but humble qualities. To enforce that these qualities are worth their own virtue, the protagonist gets their wishes fulfilled by a deus ex machina

This is awesome. My sister told me about this film/episode like maybe more than 20 years ago. Pre-internet era, so I could not search for it back then. I had even forgotten about it until now. I've never seen the episode but now thanks to you I'll be able to watch it.

Much obliged!

p.s I'm surprised the memory was still in my head considering I probably have not thought about it since my sister told me about it.

How wonderfully ironic :)

In reality, more of a prophetic message given what people will pay for the right scarce variants of Star Wars toys. No more dangerous and speculative than cryptocurrency IMO, but with a much longer investment horizon.

The part that's unrealistic IMO is the wealthy collector paying a fair price for the toys when in reality he would go out of his way to convince Mark Hamill that his crap is worthless and he's doing him a favor by giving him a pittance for it.

And the final shot would be a dirty and broken Mark Hamill sobbing uncontrollably as he watches a television in a store window where his collectibles are auctioned off one by one on one of our many shopping channels for far more than he got for them.

A recurring theme on Amazing Stories was the power of imagination best embodied by the episode about the World War II gunner who was also an animator who saved his own life by imagining a set of landing gear cartoon style after they were shot off his bomber. The Mark Hamill episode was yet another example of this theme where he prevailed by the power of his own belief in himself and his imagination.

Or the other collector could have waited until after the first's death, and then taken up the cart cackling with glee at his good fortune.

And there's the Robot Chicken vignette paying homage to this episode right there...

Haha I've thought about that episode off and on for years, it's very memorable. I honestly think they didn't have the spine to let it have a really dark ending. The resulting 'moral' is pretty fucked though, yes.

Don't delete your comment about pennies, instead, pivot to nickels. Nickels, which have much higher volume than pennies anyways, are 75% copper and 25% nickel. They're worth slightly more than 5 cents - currently, about 5.8 cents, sometimes more, sometimes less - melted down.

Do know that the Mint is aware that 5.8 is greater than 5, that melting nickels for profit is a crime with a $10k fine, and that you'll probably spend more than that profit margin on energy and equipment for melting. Interestingly, one of their reasons for rejecting alternatives like plated steel coins is that any significant change to the density, dimension, or magnetism will break anti-counterfeiting systems.

There's only so much time in life, but if you want something cool for your shelf, have some rolls of nickels, a few fire bricks, a crucible, some casting sand, and a propane burner you can make yourself an awesome, polished, high-density casting from DIY Monel K400 alloy for less than you can buy that stock from metal suppliers. Just don't sell it for profit and you'll be fine.

I bought $2k worth of nickels back 2006 as nickel metal prices were spiking[1], but the coin was not quite worth over five cents yet. I thought, "This is a great way to invest in the metal as the down side is limited and the upside is not". When the bank asked why I needed so many nickels, I told them that I was doing on internet nickel give-away promotion. That seemed to convince them and I loaded up my truck with a 1/2 ton of nickels the next week.

A few months later the government made it illegal to melt down coins as the price of nickel spiked to $50,000 a ton. Cashed almost all of them back into the bank later but, they charged me about a $100 handling fee. I wasn't going to try and melt them down or go to Mexico to make a few bucks. There was a downside after all and the upside was capped. Never forget that the laws can and often do change when investing.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/nickel

Out of curiosity, where did you intend on selling the nickel? Is there a metal recycler that buys melted down nickel at those prices? Or maybe one of those "we buy gold" places?

There are metal recyclers all over the place that buy scrap metal. Look at any moderately-sized fabricator or tool and die shop for a couple of big dumpsters with the logo of your local recycler, they'll likely have one for ferrous scrap, one for aluminum, and probably a barrel for copper wire. If you have a big project such as replacing aluminum siding or 'scrapping' a trailer, definitely bring it to a metal recycler. Even if you're not a moderately-sized fabricator, it makes some sense to keep a box in the back of the shop for scrap metal, every year or so you can bring in a load of brake rotors, broken tools and auto parts, project cutoffs, electric motors, etc. and get a hundred dollars for your trouble while keeping those perfectly good metals out of the landfill. There's a level at which it transitions from a sensible ecological and financial policy towards an untenable sign of hoarding, undervaluing your time, and/or poverty but you can hopefully recognize when you cross that line.

Be aware that they'll be suspicious and will hopefully call the police if you show up with a few hundred dollars of nearly-new copper pipe or electrical wire that you cut out of an under-construction house, or anything else that looks like it might be stolen. Desperate people try that frequently, if you have the financial ability to post on HN it's not worth it.

In my city, the biggest name is https://padnos.com/, and https://www.grcentraliron.com/ has a nice consumer-facing business, but there are similar industries everywhere.

It's interesting to go down as a consumer and shop for cut-offs, you can get small workbench-sized sheet metal, 8020 in lengths not worth bothering with for a big fabricator but plenty for a DIY project, or bar stock to build something far sturdier than you can make with a 2x4 - all at prices per pound a fraction of what you'd pay at the big box stores.

I was figuring that if the metal value of nickels got high enough then coin dealers or metal recyclers would be set up to take them and possibly even advertise this service. Similar to what happened when silver coins became more valuable than face value. I don't think it was illegal to melt down silver coins and thought nickels would be the same.

I don't believe coinage (in America) is protected. It's supposed to have intrinsic value. It's currency that's protected, and that means folding money.

For anyone else unaware, Maras = gangs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_(gang)

I liked the story!

American pennies are 97% zink, copper coated, since 1982. The new ones feel like plastic, but copper is just too expensive.

Watch me delete my comment about pennies being special.. hah. I give up. I hope they'll let me keep my playstation when I flee this shithole.

Don't delete your comment, it was pretty neat

> So this guy goes "oh shit, Sunday morning is when they're stealing our copper wiring".

> That episode has made me think for years that pennies are worth more than 1¢

Pennies are mostly made of zinc, not copper.

For the US penny that was a change made in 1982 when the previous 95% Cu penny was on course to be worth more as scrap metal than currency.

Great story!

noduerme says >"...but there's only so much time in life to hoard useless shit."<

Would only that this did not apply to the human brain, which seems capable of storing an infinite amount of useless shit (and incapable of allowing us to edit out the smallest undesired part)!

That's well written little story there. I could picture every bit of it.

> Sunday morning is when they're stealing our copper wiring

Huh... what folks need is a way to rollup their copper wiring and take it with them at the close of business.