In 2004, a piece of chewing gum sold for $14,000 on eBay. The gum didn’t confer any special qualities. It didn’t promise to endow the new owner with immortality. Heck, it didn’t even taste good. So why the exorbitant price?
Britney Spears inadvertently spat it out. One “lucky” concert attendee caught the gum, listed it on eBay, and was handsomely rewarded.
If you’re prone to think that dropping $14k on a piece of used chewing gum is a little crazy, you’re in good company. But for the right person, there’s a bustling market for all kinds of celebrity items. During Kanye West’s 2015 “Yeezus” tour, literal bags of air from his shows fetched upwards of $500. Justin Timberlake’s leftover scraps of French Toast went for over $3000, while a snippet of Justin Bieber’s hair drove a $40k price tag at a charity auction.
There’s a lot to say about what these sales indicate about modern celebrity culture. But when we dig deeper, we can easily see that this isn’t a new trend. And, as we’ll see, it isn’t limited to celebrity culture at all.
Certain, specific things are valued drastically more than other things of that same category. Any ordinary piece of gum is worth about 20 cents. But a particular piece of gum – perhaps previously in the mouth of our favorite celebrity? Potentially priceless.
Understanding this comes down to a strange quirk of human psychology. In our minds, otherwise ordinary objects can be easily infused with greater meaning and significance. This goes beyond the simple impact of celebrity ownership. Instead, it’s a fundamental feature of how we value objects (and products!) that we encounter. Because of this, it can provide a massive edge to marketers, who can harness this phenomenon to drive behavior.
But first: what exactly is this phenomenon?
As crazy as Britney Spears’ chewing gum is, there’s always been a massive market for celebrity items. JFK’s rocking chair was bought for $60k, while Audrey Hepburn’s working script for Breakfast at Tiffany’s fetched nearly $1M. In 2017, Paul Newman’s Rolex went for $17M.
This isn’t a new fad. Instead, it’s a broad feature of human neuroscience: our brain is sensitive to what it perceives as the deeper, hidden spirit of an object. You can think of this essence as an object’s soul; it’s the hidden nature that supersedes the thing’s physical parts.
