Collectible Capital

I went to Starbucks this morning at the tail end of my commute. I hadn't been in one for a while.

They're all pretty busy, but the one at the east end of Redmond Way does its best to affect the tone and clamor of the trading floor at a stock exchange. It's a nice effect. Customers bark commands into their hands-free units while keeping one eye on the clock, the other searching out a bare spot of floor or wall to avoid eye contact with other patrons. Baristas accept drive-thru orders via their own headsets and condense the civilian-speak into the highly specific, abbreviated to-go cup jargon that facilitates wordless communication.

There are always incredibly interesting things to see in places like this, amidst the sea of humanity trying to rend milliseconds of sanity from their hyper-productive lives.

Today I saw the strangest damn thing ever. The woman in front of me spent her queue time consciously fingering every piece of merchandise along the edifice of the counter. She touched sandwiches, she touched teddy bears. She squeezed a mug whilst shaking up some Odwalla. It wasn't until she reached the front though, that her fingers really seized onto something.

She grabbed it, turned it over, put it back. Her fingers kind of danced over it for a minute, then she picked it back up. It was a Starbucks Card. "What a thoughtful gift," I said to myself, giving the gift of ready-made coffee.

My mother has given me several of these cards in the last year, struggling to find a gift for the Seattleite that has next to nothing. "Starbucks is good, that's what they do over there," I imagine her thinking as decides to forego her regular, de-centralized drive-up espresso kiosk--which are more fashionable in the Inland Empire--that she may purchase for her son a gift that grasps the corporate beverage essence of his new life away from home.

Then the woman did something strange. She asked for $30 dollars on the card, "and take my coffee out of that."
"This morning?"
"Yes"

The Barista was confused as well. Confusing a Barista is difficult. Things became a little clearer when the woman was asked if she'd like an envelope for her gift card, now worth approximately $26.78.

"No thanks, it's for me. "

To . . . what . . . end?

I can't imagine why someone would trade one form of capital at a 1 to 1 conversion rate for another of more limited purchasing power. Bi-monthly Coffee budget? Perhaps.

I remember though, reading about the commemorative 4th of July Starbucks card of a few years ago, the first of the seasonal Starbucks cards. Highly collectible, I'm told. One recently sold for more than $500 dollars.

I don't know what that says about us as a nation, that we collect and trade our limited and perishable devices of capital transmission--our gift certificates.

I was planning a more forceful conclusion, but I just can't wrap my head around it.

Collecting in general is strange . . .