A 99-Cent Horse Head Sold for $62.95 Once It Had a Story
Two hundred ordinary objects bought for $129 resold for $8,000 when each came with fiction.
TEDx Talks · The magical science of storytelling | David JP Phillips | TEDxStockholmA horse head bought on eBay for 99 cents later resold for $62.95 after a short story was attached to it.
In 2009, Rob Walker, a journalist, bought 200 objects on eBay for about a dollar each. He asked 200 authors to each write a story for one object, and then he listed all 200 for sale again, story included. The horse head sold for about 64 times what it had cost.
It was not a fluke. Walker had paid $129 in total for the lot, and the story-enhanced collection brought in $8,000. The objects had not changed, only the words around them had, and buyers paid more.
Questions people ask
Did buyers think the stories were true?
No. The listings presented the stories as fiction written for the project, not as the true history of the object. Buyers knew they were paying for a thrift-store item plus an invented story.
Who wrote the 200 stories?
They were professional fiction writers, enlisted by Walker and fellow writer Joshua Glenn for what they called the Significant Objects project. Each contributed an original short story, which was shown alongside the eBay listing for that object.
Does adding a story usually raise the selling price?
Yes, in a broad sense. Sellers of everything from houses to handmade goods now add detailed origin stories, and experiments consistently find that people will pay more when an item carries a vivid narrative. The lift is rarely this large, but the direction is reliable.