We were taught economics in school

I was reading "The wealth of nations" by Adam Smith. And I realised that I seemed to understand what he was saying really well! It is strange how real life events teach you so much more than you can ever cram. I learnt economics when I was in class 5. And my younger brother learnt it in class 2. I think Funskool had set up shop in Goa recently. They were manufacturing their stuff from somewhere near Panjim. They came to our school (Sharda Mandir School) to promote their products. My bro and I were already huge fans of funskool toys (we had our own collection of G.I. Joe's at home), as were most of the other boys I guess... Don't know about the girls. At that age I hated them anyway ;-).

They gave each one of us some cool G.I.Joe book labels. Remember the kind of labels we used to put on our school books. Well these were no ordinary labels, they had cool G.I.Joe figures printed by the side. Like firefly, snowjob, cobra and gung-ho and gosh I dont even remember their names now :-(. Anyway we were all very excited to have this cool stuff... Two points to be noted here. Sharda Mandir School, a very strict school allowed funskool to distribute the labels. And secondly, funskool, knowingly or unknowingly I don't know, but I suspect that it was a marketing strategy - distributed unequal numbers of various kinds of labels.

So while everyone got like around 50 labels, some labels were quite rare. For example for every 10 firefly labels they gave out, they gave 2 snowjob labels, and maybe just one gung-ho label. Guess what happened in the days that followed. Everyone started collecting these labels. People started showing of their labels and trading them. Someone would have like the rarest of the rare cobra label!! He would be the envy of the whole school.

The labels were treated like currency notes. If a firefly label was worth 10 bucks, the snowjob labels were worth 50 bucks and the gung-ho a 100 bucks. The cobra would ofcourse be pure gold. Note that the "value" of the labels was more if it was rare. This basic funda in economics was known to kids who were still learning addition and substraction in class 1 and 2. Also note that the exchange was strictly barter. No real currency was involved. You give 10 firefly labels you get 1 gung-ho label. But surprise surprise.

The values began to change!! It was probably because some smart kids went and brought some more labels into the system from either the factory or shops. Suddenly
there was a flood of Gung-ho labels (100 bucks) and so its price fell drastically :-). Until one day it was almost equal to the firefly label! So although the guys who "innovated" by procuring labels from the factory itself made a huge initial profit, they had to innovate once again to make the same kind of money :-). One dude had a colour printer in his house ;-) ... hehehe no prizes for guessing what he did.


My collection was basically a joint account with my brother. He once gave away some precious labels to his "friend". He told me that his "friend" had taken them by force. I being the elder brother decided to take matters into my own hands. Went to the kid bro's friend and held him by the collar. Gave him a good trashing, and asked him to return the labels to my bro. Don't really remember if he did though. There were many more such fights happening all over the school. Finally the school administration got fed up and confiscated all the labels. Now everyone was sad.

Soon we got fed up of the damn labels and moved on to bigger things. Now I realise that I am actually stuck with the damn labels for the rest of my life. The only difference is that the new labels look much more boring than the funskool ones and the rare ones have the picture of a bespectacled bald man instead of cobra or gung-ho.