2nd hand Christmas presents and shared passion
Image from Tradera
This year I finished the Christmas presents with a couple of weeks of margin for the first time ever. The most important thing is to find some wonderful experiences for my boys. I managed to grab a couple of 2nd hand bargains on Tradera (Swedish Ebay). My older son loves Legos and vehicles and before long I found a super nice and large fire truck which I grabbed for 200 SEK (new price close to 2000 SEK) and a small jet plane for half the price of a lunch. The only thing that is missing is the sealed boxes. He’ll get cardboard boxes and plastic bags with Legos instead, and I don’t think he will care at all. I wonder what the Lego group is thinking about my 2nd hand purchases. Reusing instead of new is wise of course, but I also wonder if they consider it a lost sale?
On the other hand, perhaps they realize that the 2nd hand purchases is the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner salesman who puts his foot in the door. It’ll perhaps plant a seed and the probability of my buying more brand-new sets has probably increased now. I have always loved Legos and in recent years I discovered them again as an adult. It is analogous to building a puzzle. A well-defined problem that captures your full attention for a couple of hours and gives you instant feedback. That sound like a pretty good deal to me. Building that fire truck with my son this Christmas will probably be a peak life experience. By the way, I heard that he had met with Santa some weeks ago at some market thing and he had apparently told Santa that he wished a fire truck. What a lovely coincidence. I can’t wait to see his reaction.
And son number two isn’t as big of a Lego fan, but he is without the shadow of a doubt a little musician in the making. Since I introduced the little one-year old guy to my drum studio/rehearsal room, he now says all the time “drums” in that cute way someone who is just learning to talk can do. He wants to go drumming in the morning, by lunch and two to three times in the evening. He can’t get enough of that music studio, and I love it. One thing that bugged me as a kid was when I got musical toys and wanted to really play “real” music them but couldn’t, due to technical limitations. I especially remember my Casio keyboard that had 4-voice polyphony and just too few keys to use two-handed. Close but no cigar. And I also remember a little xylophone that was almost OK if it only had a couple of more notes. The increased range would have allowed me to play perhaps 100X more melodies on it. It is so frustrating when you learn a song only to realize that the final note does not exist. Luckily, today this is not an issue. When I buy a toy musical instrument for my kids, I really do my research first and make sure that they are and can be used as real musical instruments. So, after some research I ordered a couple of small percussion instruments for him. A small tongue drum and a Sonor Xylophone, with a significantly larger range than the one I had. Both instruments are played with mallets, and I hope he will find them satisfying. The greatest benefit of small acoustic instruments is that they are the literal definition of “plug and play” except you don’t even have to plug them. You grab them and go, anytime and anywhere. And that, is one of the most important properties of any musical instrument besides the technical aspects. A good instrument is one that you put a lot of mileage on.
I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree as both of my sons seem to have inherited two of my greatest passions. We will have a lot of fun together. It’s perhaps a bit too late now, but if you’re hunting for Christmas next year, I highly recommend that you check out the 2nd hand market on the auction sites.