h a l f b a k e r y"Not baked goods, Professor; baked bads!" -- The Tick
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Let's see: we have markets in futures for everything from wheat, gas, oil, soy, stocks, hogs, and innumerable other things. Why not bobbleheads? It would cover everything from football player ones, NASCAR drivers, and even good old Obama himself.
The main function of a futures market is to allow people
to hedge against the change in price of a commodity or financial instrument, thus minimizing losses if it moves against them. A secondary function is to allow speculators to bet on future price movements. It seems to me that people who buy bobbleheads in significant numbers (i.e. 100,000 or more, so a wholesaler for instance) would need to hedge against the price changing before they can offload them. This market would allow them to do that.
A contract could be established on the NYMEX (now part of CME Group). The symbol would be BOBL, and one contract could control 10,000 units. A one penny change in price would therefore mean a gain or loss of $100 to the contract holder.
you could cash in on the Collectible People collections
http://www.bobbleheads.com/
[xandram, Apr 12 2010]
[link]
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You've determined that futures markets can be applied to "everything", then you specify one of the instances that this "everything" might possibly be - then you describe the same set of advantages that the person perfoming this function gets for this instance (the bobblehead) as they would for any other instance. So, the question I'm building up to here is, apart from picking a specific pre-existing object at random and suggesting that we perform some equally pre-existing function on it, for the same benefits that we would achieve for any other application of the same function, what is the new idea here? |
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If I post a slew of ideas that follow the same formula (identify random object x and apply random function y to it) I might, based on a few initial elements, quickly generate an exponential number of ideas.
e.g. Assuming I start with the following 8 paired objects and associated actions or functions:
Consume ham.
Trade oil futures.
Listen to the radio.
Drive car.
Juggle Hand-grenades.
Spill milk.
Collect bottle-caps.
Identify murderer.
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A simple combination algorithm can efficiently re-arrange those 8 paired items into 64 combinations, of which 56 are "unusual" - is it necessary to post any of them? |
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{Consume ham, Consume oil futures, Consume radio, Consume car, Consume hand-grenade, Consume milk, Consume bottle-cap, Consume murderer,
Trade ham, Trade oil futures, Trade radio, Trade car, Trade hand-grenade, Trade milk, Trade bottle-cap, Trade murderer,
Listen to ham, Listen to oil futures, Listen to radio, Listen to car, Listen to hand-grenade, Listen to milk, Listen to bottle-cap, Listen to murderer,
Drive ham, Drive oil futures, Drive radio, Drive car, Drive hand-grenade, Drive milk, Drive bottle-cap, Drive murderer,
Juggle ham, Juggle oil futures, Juggle radio, Juggle car, Juggle hand-grenade, Juggle milk, Juggle bottle-cap, Juggle murderer,
Spill ham, Spill oil futures, Spill radio, Spill car, Spill hand-grenade, Spill milk, Spill bottle-cap, Spill murderer,
Collect ham, Collect oil futures, Collect radio, Collect car, Collect hand-grenade, Collect milk, Collect bottle-cap, Collect murderer,
Identify ham, Identify oil futures, Identify radio, Identify car, Identify hand-grenade, Identify milk, Identify bottle-cap, Identify murderer} |
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Actually, I consume ham WHILE trading oil futures, listening to the radio, driving and juggling hand grenades quite frequently. It does cause me to spill milk, however. I do collect the caps from the milk bottles though, and have indirectly helped identify a murderer (by being part of the line-up). |
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So, it's no stretch to me that all the other combos thereof are plausible. |
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Especially juggling murderers. |
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Eagerly awaiting [ZT]'s posting of 56 new ideas |
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I disagree with zen_tom The idea here is a futures trade in
celebrity. The really clever thing about it is the concept
that bobbleheads reify notoriety. The price of a
bobblehead reflects the market's expectation of that
person's future fame. That's why bobbleheads aren't just a
randomly selected commodity. |
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Celebrities come and go. Odd, unexpected people
become extremely famous, but you can't tell if their fame
will last, or if they'll turn out to be nine-day-wonders.
There are "blue-chip" celebrities (heads of state, supreme
court justices), and you can try to make rational
predictions (e.g. before the last US presidential election
you might have sold McCain and bought Obama based on
polling results) but you can still guess wrong (if you sold
Palin short, you'd have made a big mistake). If you'd had
inside dope on JK Rowling, you'd have made a killing. |
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They're 3D characature toys, normally celebrities, the heads, on
springs, bob up and down and wobble too and fro, bob +
wobble + head = bobblehead. That's 'b' as in 'boy', 'o', 'b' as
in 'boy', 'b' as in 'boy', 'l', 'e', 'head'. Bobblehead. |
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Ideas CAN recombine, like DNA, to create new ideas. Whether
they are good or bad is selelected by the 'audience'. |
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This idea is funny and wonderful to imagine, people seriously
betting on Bobblehead Futures. |
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I like the Listen to Milk idea name. I would Drive Ham in a pinch.
+ |
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