May 26, 2005
Week 5 - The Can - Part 3
Episode 4
Rantz talks with Harry in the offices of Fiddle and Burn Magazine.
“It was the damndest thing,” Rantz says. “I thought that judge was going to throw the book at me for messing with the garbage men. But then he took one look at the old trash can that caused all the problems and it was like… like he just melted. He said it was a collectors item…”
Harry snorts. “Collectors item!”
“He offered to dismiss the case if I just let him have the can.”
“So?”
“So I let him have the can! It was insane.”
“Collectors are insane. Let me tell you about collectors. They ruined the comic book industry, I’ll tell you that!”
“All right…”
“During the eighties, there was this big boom. Some rich idiots paid tens of thousands of dollars for some golden age books and suddenly all hell broke loose. People went nuts, buying, like, five copies of every new comic cause they thought it’d be worth a fortune someday. They’d seal them in these hermitically tight bags, store them in climate controlled rooms… they didn’t even read the damn things.”
“What happened?”
“What happens to all bubbles? It burst. Someone somewhere needed money so he decided to sell. Guess what? No one was buying. All of a sudden, the price guides said the value of everything was something like one one-hundredth what it had been. All the collectors left the market and half the comic book companies went bust.”
“Wow…”
“So, let me tell you about collectors… They’re all insane… That judge is just an idiot.”
Rantz nods.
On the other side of Manhattan, Judge Sinarate gingerly lifts the old can from the back of his double parked SUV. It has been polished and the dents have been pushed out. Very carefully, he carries it into a dark antique shop.
Several minutes later, he steps out. He no longer carries the can. He gets behind the wheel of his vehicle, shuts the door and smiles.
From his rear pocket, he pulls out a thick wad of one hundred dollar bills.