Do not throw it away because it might become valuable one day

AFTER MY DAD’S father died, his mother remarried Isaac, a merchant, who lived and worked in Port Elizabeth (South Africa).

In his holidays, both school and then later university, Dad, whose father had owned a general store (in Tulbagh, South Africa), helped his stepfather in his shop in Port Elizabeth. Once again, he was in an environment where he was acquiring first-hand experience of the workings of commerce, one of the foundations on which the study of economics is based. By all accounts, including the fact that Isaac could afford regular holidays in Europe, the business prospered. Dad told me that during his vacations, he used to help Isaac compile annual inventories of his stock.

The shop owned by my father’s father in Tulbagh

One day, Dad came across many large glass bottles filled with boiled sweets that had become unsaleable because the candies had fused together to form huge masses. My father asked Isaac whether these bottles should be thrown out. He was told that they were to be retained. A few years later, WW2 broke out and there was a shortage of glass. Isaac sold the bottles filled with inedible sweets because the glass, now valuable, could be sold (for recycling) during the glass ‘famine’.

Was it experiences in his father’s and stepfather’s shops that might have led him to eventually become a professor of economics, and helped him to understand the concept of futures markets? I wonder.