For my birthday last September my mother sent me a 100 percent cotton, lovely pink shirt. Unfortunately, she imagined I was 40 pounds heavier than I am, and the lovely pink shirt from J. Crew was the size of a small tent. I forgot to bring it with me when I visited New York in April, but threw it in my suitcase last week with grand plans to return it.
Admittedly, the shirt is now a year old, but it still has the original tags and is essentially new. The J. Crew store is but a few blocks from my mother’s apartment, located at Columbus Circle, so on Monday morning I strolled over, shirt in hand. The person at the counter told me she would locate a “clientele specialist” that could help me with the return or exchange, and a nice-looking young man soon appeared. I’ve never been attended to by a clientele specialist before, just sales clerks; things, I thought, were looking good. “Well! I haven’t seen this color in a while!” he brightly exclaimed, took the shirt and said he would check the price.
Returning quickly, he gazed into my eyes sympathetically, then demurely dropped his chin and gently said the shirt was now worth but $9.95. The lovely pink shirt, new, unworn and bearing its original tags, had depreciated from its initial value of $69.95 to that of one pair of J. Crew plain, cotton-and-nylon-blend, black socks.
“How,” I asked, “is it possible for a new, unworn, lovely pink shirt with its original tags to drop in value in twelve months by 85%? Is this a shirt or a Wall Street stock?” While in New York I tend toward sarcasm. He smiled sheepishly, “This style shirt was discontinued, placed on sale, discounted, moved to the sale rack and then marked down. We no longer have it in stock. Its present value is now $9.95.” I found myself lost for words. I stood there blinking, desperately trying to resolve the paradox of the lost value of the lovely pink shirt.
I weighed my options: I could (a) Ask for the manager and attempt to negotiate a better price, (b) Stand outside the store entrance and offer the shirt to very large men for a mere $30, (c) Meekly accept the offer made by the clientele specialist and walk out with a pair of socks, (d) Accept a $9.95 gift card in exchange, or (e) Leave and take the shirt with me back to California where it could remain in my closet for 20 years, be left to my nephew in my will and eventually become so old that it would regain or exceed its original value as a lovely antique pink shirt circa 2006. I think a notice should be posted warning customers: “The value of a J. Crew shirt may quickly depreciate to near zero. Shopping is a speculative endeavor. Buyers should consult a financial advisor before purchase.”
I opted for the gift card. I will include it in a birthday box for my daughter this September. Ironically, because it is a worthless piece of printed flexible plastic with $9.95 in credit embedded in its magnetic strip, it will, unlike the 100 percent cotton, lovely pink shirt, retain its original value forever.
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