What are You Really Paying for?

The other day I found myself in a store called The Paper Source. It's your typical paper store filled with cute nic-nacs and almost everything crafty you can thing of. As I was walking around the store, I stumbled across a bunch of adorable "thank you" cards. In anticipation of all the birthday presents I plan to get, I thought why not purchase some "thank you" cards. There were so many cute cards that I couldn't decide. I resorted to looking for the cheapest ones, since I'm just an average college student with a pretty tight budget. I was astonished by the prices of these "thank you" cards. I mean who would pay $16.75 (I remember the exact price that's how blown away I was) for 10 "thank you" cards with corresponding envelopes. That is an outrageous crime, if you ask me.

I ended up purchasing some blank $8 cards that would do the job. The cards I bought had a cool design on the front of them and I could easily write "thank you" on the inside. There was one thing I just couldn't wrap my brain around. For half the price I purchased these blank cards that would do the same job as the more expensive cards. When you think about it, the only difference between the actual cards was that one set had "thank you" displayed on the front and the other set didn't. Also, the packaging of the cards was different. The expensive cards were in a clear plastic box and the other cards were just held together by a piece of paper. This left me with the question, what are we really paying for when we buy things? Are we paying for what happens behind the scenes of the manufacturing of products, are we paying for the packaging, or in this case are we paying for 8 letters that could have been written for no price?