I wanted to start a discussion about the ethics of parting with gifts.
It has come up in conversations in the past, and I would like to know how you feel about it.
From the perspective of someone who has given a yoyo or some kind of yoyo related equipment [for free], how do you feel about the recipient eventually:
If I gave something away, then it isn’t mine anymore and they are free to do with it as they please. I no longer have any attachment to it, so why should I care? Anyone who gives something away and yet retains some sense of personal ownership or attachment hasn’t really given it away. That’s my feeling anyway.
So does that mean that it is okay for them to sell the gift?
Of course! It’s theirs now, not mine.
If you sell a gift; you should Die Screaming.
If you trade a gift; you should Die Screaming.
If you give the gift to somebody else; that’s pretty much ok.
I’m, kinda, with doc on this one. I’ve given tons of yoyos away, cheap ones and expensive ones. I’d feel a little perturbed if I saw someone selling it. I’d feel a whole lot better if they said, hey someone gave this to me, I’d like to pass it on.
But that’s just me.
Gift giving with conditions placed on them isn’t really gift giving, now is it. At best it is a form of lending with “wide latitude” placed upon the borrower.
So it’s okay [with you] if someone sells something that you gave them for free?
I’m torn a bit about this. Part of me wants to say people shouldn’t sell or trade gifts, but, that sort of doesn’t make sense to the other part of me. Lets say I get a brand new pair of shoes as a gift. They may fit well, be the greatest pair of shoes ever made (for argument sake, lets pretend they were made and purchased by a cobbler outside the USA where exchanging them would be a nearly impossible task). The shoes just don’t match my style, in fact, I think they are hideous. It should be my right to sell or trade them for a pair that I will actually use. The gift giver should be comfortable knowing that while I would have not gotten any use from what they gave me, I leveraged it into something I would use.
That said, I’ve been thinking how I would feel as the giver. My sincere hope is I would want the recipient to enjoy what I gave, but, once it was theirs, I should be happy with them doing with it what they want.
Added thought: this may become a bit murkier if a yoyo friend of mine had a yoyo that I really enjoyed. Doesn’t matter if it is a $6 Whip or a $300 Luftverk. If they give me the yoyo because they know I enjoyed playing it, a big part of me says I should keep the yoyo. I like to think if they gave me their yoyo, and, after it was mine, I realized it didn’t give me joy, I should offer it back to them, especially if I knew it gave them joy. However, it still comes down to when something is given, it now belongs to the recipient and it no longer belongs to the giver.
As a rule of thumb, I’d say selling a gift is kind of slimy to do. But it does depend on the circumstances. There are definitely exceptions where selling something given to you is perfectly acceptable.
Let’s say your parents gave you a car for your 16th. Years later, you’ve got kids and need a larger vehicle. You cannot afford the insurance/maintenance/general cost of having two cars. Should you not sell the car/trade it in when buying your minivan?
As far as yoyos go, i wouldn’t feel good about selling anything someone gave to me. It has sentimental value to me. And the money that would be gained from the sale is relatively miniscule, seeing as you’d be looking at, what, 50 bucks or so? It’s not like that couple dollars is gonna bail you out of some crisis that came out of nowhere, it’s simply not worth that much cash.
The sentimental value is worth much more to me than any yoyo is worth.
If a gift is meaningful, I’m going to keep it. Yoyos tend to be meaningful. I keep a lot of stuff,like yoyos I win or yoyos I get at contests because there’s stories behind them too. I’m pretty sentimental tho
I think it’s fine to trade/sell a gift as long as you don’t do it immediately after receiving it. If you spend some time enjoying the gift then it has served it’s purpose. And maybe by selling/trading it away you can get yourself something that will bring you even more enjoyment, that’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Sure! Why should I be bothered by this? I’ve given the thing away. It is no longer mine. I should have no emotional investment in what they do with it after that.
How ignoble to give someone a gift and then feel disapproval over what they do with it afterwords. It is no longer yours anymore; time to detach from it emotionally and let the new owner be its new owner, with all the freedoms that ought to entail (including not feeling guilty over selling it or re-gifting it just because the giver can’t get past their need to control the situation).
I agree with zslane on the issue; a recipient of a gift has full ownership and should be able to do with it whatever he chooses. It shows a lack of appreciation on the recipient if he chooses to part with it immediately, but he has no ethical obligation to give it away for free. You are not morally obligated to appreciate someone else’s kind gesture. It may be the decent thing to do, but making a profit on the exchange is not unethical.
I will say that personally I probably would not do this myself. As an Eagle Scout I’ve been taught to be more decent than the lowest denominator, and would appreciate the kind gesture, even if the item was undesirable to me. I would probably hold on to it for a while before giving it away myself. In the best case, it would be a sentimental item that I would cherish, but I’m assuming in this scenario that the gift was not. I think that there is a certain respect that you should show charity, but I don’t think that this is the baseline for ethical behavior.
Holding on to the item for a while before selling it would be more respectful of the charitable behavior, and is probably the best way to go about it if you want to be more decent about it. I’d still feel morally obligated to give it away, personally speaking.
I think it is in poor taste to sell a gift, IMO. Giving it away to some one else with more need for said gift is great though. I strongly believe in paying it forward.
If I understand the original question, it isn’t asking what we would do with a gift we’re given, but how we feel about what others do with the gifts we give them. If someone feels out of sorts (disapproval, distaste, et. al.) because the recipient of a gift adheres to a different social contract than theirs, then I think they need to become less ego-invested in the gift-giving process. Giving a gift isn’t about the giver, it’s about the recipient and what they get out of it. Sometimes they don’t get out of it what you hope/think/expect they will. You can’t control that, nor should you even want to try.
I absolutely agree with @zslane and @YoYoExpertGarrett on this.
If you have given a gift and you have truly given it as a gift, then what happens after that should be of no consequence to you.
Personally, I don’t like to sell things that were gifted to me. I like to regift them when the time comes. Preferably after I have enjoyed and appreciated the gift.
This is precisely why if someone ever gifted me a 1/1 Bi-tanium I would keel over and die.
Yeah I agree with this. Full quoted for emphasis, because it was well stated.
I could never sell the Puffin1 that I got in secret santa on here several years ago. I could not bear to do that in the face of such incredible generosity. Its sentimental value will always far exceed the monetary value it could fetch on the BST.
If i ever get out of the hobby entirely (not likely) I would sell most, and give that one to someone special so the karma train continues.