Can I keep that Babe Ruth Baseball Card? [By: Male; Age 13; New Jersey]
September, 2012
English: 1933 Goudey baseball card of Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees #181. PD-not-renewed. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was recently at a garage sale, just looking around when I found a box of very old baseball cards. I was looking through them and stumbled upon a Babe Ruth card. I quickly looked up its value on my smart phone, and discovered it was worth over $250! I went up to the woman running the sale, and asked hear how much she wanted for the box of old cards. She replied $4, saying she was happy to finally get rid of them. The question is…
DO I HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO LET HER KNOW ABOUT THE BABE RUTH CARD, WHICH IS WORTH A LOT MORE THAN SHE WAS SELLING THEM TO ME FOR?
I don’t think that I would be obligated to inform her about the valuable Babe Ruth baseball card for a few reasons.
1) It is her responsibility to know what her products are, so tough luck to her. Just because she didn’t take responsibility to check the value of what she was selling, didn’t make it my responsibility. If she was interested in seeing if there were any valuable cards, she should have taken he time to do so.
2) She told me that she would be happy to get rid of them, implying she has no interest in them. She made it sound like she didn’t want them anymore, so that let me know she did not care about them.
3) She did not do anything useful with the cards until now, what makes me think she will do something if I tell her the value of the card.
Babe Ruth Baseball Card and Compassion
All that being said, while it is true that I have no obligation to let her know about the value card, it would be the nice thing to do if I let her know that there was in fact an extremely valuable card in there. Doing small stuff like this can be the start to more good deeds. What makes a good person is going beyond what is necessary, expected, or obligated. If you start with the small stuff, as time goes on, you will eventually move to bigger tasks, that can make a huge impact on people lives. So, while I still think I am not obligated to tell her, I think I should tell her, and I would like to think I would tell her.
What do you think? We’d like to hear your thoughts.
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