Selling

"Don't."

"Not yet."

"Hold onto it."

That's what everyone is saying, about almost everything these days. Based on the prices I've seen on Wall Street, on eBay and Goodwill's auction site, and on even the most hard-core collector's arenas, I would agree.

Almost.

It depends on what I'm selling.

If it's stocks, especially bank stocks or anything else that's fallen below my poverty level, then probably I don't have much more to lose so what the heck, right? I'll hold it. If it's precious metals, then I might be able to find someone who's willing to pay a bit of filthy lucre, but I did some calculations (seriously - I have a number thing) and figured out few items are selling anywhere near even their scrap weight price (although gold items are still selling well above where they were a decade ago). If it's milk glass or comic books or a house in my area - not even on a dare. Maybe it's time to buy - maybe - but I'm sure it's not the time to sell.

Unless it's exquisite. Or was free. Or both.

Not that anything is selling for what it did two years ago, at the height of the economic frenzy. But there is money flowing out there. People are buying at something other than rock-bottom prices. Jewelry can sell for amazing prices - if it's beautifully crafted, fabulously detailed, and made of some kind of precious metal. And bonds, unless they've defaulted, are still halfway decent. Land without a house on it sells for a good price, even around here. And some stocks (Johnson and Johnson comes to mind) have fallen but a tiny bit - in a market that slid like a California hillside during a rainstorm. And anything I've picked up off the ground, or I bought for pennies to begin with - these are the things I'll put on eBay in a heartbeat, especially when I need the money, because even if they don't sell for what they could later, they'll sell for more than I paid for it now.

We're not very logical about selling, most of the time. I learned, with the yard sale, that I hold onto things too long - some of my items wouldn't even have sold for what I paid if I'd done this two or three years ago, but ten years ago ... yeah. We kick ourselves, then, because we should have timed the market better. We should have been smarter. We should have known, somehow, that a downturn would occur, that our collectibles would not hold their value, that we could have made more, shouldn't have lost that much ... blah, blah, blah.

Bullocks. None of us has a crystal ball. I was reading some articles from just a couple of months ago, advice from the stock market "experts," and in some cases I just laughed my butt off. They might know more than we do about the present and the past, but they don't know about the future. "Hindsight is always twenty-twenty," my mother used to say. And foresight is fuzzy. For all of us.

So what do or will I do about this? First, I try to buy smarter to begin with (more on that over the next couple of weeks) so that I don't ever have to sell at a loss if I can avoid it, and I will do even more of that. Second, I will pick and choose what I sell carefully - and do the research to see where I'll get the best prices! Third, before I sell I will figure out if I can earn more first, especially if what I have to sell is severely undervalued or I'll get a penalty. Fourth, if I still must sell, for whatever reason, I will not blow the proceeds on more jewelry or other luxury or "investment" tems.

But for now, as long as my job and the Big Lug's hold out, I'm going to just give more away, because - hey! - I'm not using that chair, that crock pot, or that game anymore.

Are you?