Vampire Weekend's Surprising Jewish Stories
2 min read
I heard of a man who went into a thrift shop and saw a watch without a band priced at $5. He thought it might be worth more, and so he took a picture of it and sent it friends of his in the antique business. After a few minutes he received a response that the watch is worth $50,000 or more. He immediately returned to the store, said nothing about it to the owner, and bought the watch for $5 – which he later resold for $50,000. How would Jewish law view such behavior?
Thank you for sharing the interesting situation. In Jewish law, the rules are fairly simple. All items have an assessed value. This value does not depend on the material or utility of the item alone, but on all factors which contribute to its worth – such as its beauty, rarity, age, and the demand for it. Jewish law thus recognizes that an antique’s value follows the price experts evaluate it to be, even though that is much greater than its value based on its usefulness.
Now if an item is under- or oversold because of a lack of knowledge on the part of the buyer or seller, if the discrepancy between the actual price and selling price was over a sixth of the total, the sale is invalid. Thus, even paying $40,000 for such a watch would be grounds for annulling the sale, let alone $5.
One exception would be if the item is sold through a broker who does not actually own the item and the original owner is not known. If an antique was bought under such circumstances, the buyer may keep it. (Source: Shulchan Aruch C.M. 232:18.)
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