Sometimes parents don’t understand why their kids collect the things they collect.
For example, a mom might look at a Pokemon card collection and see it is clutter, while a collector sees the real value.
In today’s story, a friend gets revenge on a former friend due to the friend’s mom’s ignorance.
Let’s see how the story plays out…
I went to middle school in the early 2010s, right before smartphones really took off.
I got my first phone right before starting sixth grade, it was a slide phone with a pay as you go plan.
It cost $0.10 per minute for calls and per text message sent or received. Worse yet, sending or receiving photos cost $0.25 each.
It was very expensive, and my parents only gave me $100 a year for this.
If I exceeded the amount, I had to cover the rest with my limited birthday and Christmas money I had.
Fortunately, most of my friends were good about helping me preserve the balance.
They would call and I’d let the call drop but immediately call back on a landline so it wouldn’t count as a call, and they’d email me or message me on skype for most things.
Enter Derek…
Everything was good until Derek joined the group in seventh grade.
At first we thought he was funny, but we quickly got fed up with him as he was very unpleasant and exhibited many antisocial behaviors.
He started drama within the friend group and also caused issues between us and other kids outside of the group.
He was manipulative and always played the victim when others rightfully called him out on his stuff, and he knew how to charm parents, so getting rid of him was easier said than done.
Derek spammed his phone with memes.
He was the one friend who didn’t respect my phone situation.
He very frequently texted me dumb memes, even though I told him multiple times to just email or skype them to me instead since picture text messages cost $0.25 each.
Unfortunately, blocking phone numbers was a feature that was unavailable for this pay as you go plan, so there was nothing I could do as he spammed my phone.
One day he got mad at me for some reason and spammed my phone with memes.
He must’ve sent me over 100 lolcats over text, he kept sending them until I lost service since my phone balance was depleted.
I had lost the $40 remaining in my account as a result.
He told his dad about Derek.
I was extremely mad and demanded that he pay me the $40 he had cost me.
He refused and said it wasn’t his problem.
I got home from school really upset and told my dad about the situation, expecting him to go and tear Derek’s mother a new one and demand the money, but my dad said that it wasn’t worth the battle.
I even asked him about a small claims court but he said that not all battles are worth fighting, and that the effort wasn’t worth $40.
The phone carrier blocked Derek’s number.
He took me to the carrier’s store and loaded $50 onto the phone.
The carrier changed my phone number, and they managed to block Derek’s number.
They had initially said that blocking phone numbers wasn’t possible with this plan, but my dad insisted and would not leave the store until they did it.
I was extremely paranoid about my phone number being leaked and other kids spamming it to mess with me.
Derek was kicked out of the friend group.
Fortunately, my parents got iPhones that summer and got me one too, and the new family plan had an unlimited text plan.
Nonetheless, I was mad at the $40 he essentially stole from me out of malice.
Fortunately, not too long after, there was a big blowout between Derek and the rest of the friend group at the end of the school year and we permanently kicked him out of the group.
He was an outcast the following year in 8th grade, nobody was tolerating his stuff anymore.
He changed schools the year after and we never heard from him again.
Years later, he stumbled upon Derek’s house.
Fast forward to a few years ago, I was back home for a few months between graduating college and starting a new job on the other side of the country.
I went out to some garage sales one Saturday morning and I ended up at Derek’s house.
I recognized his mother, but I don’t think she recognized me, I guess glasses and a beard is all you need.
Derek’s mom showed him all of Derek’s Pokemon stuff.
I noticed some Pokemon napkins out for sale, and when I picked them up to look at them, Derek’s mom said that her son had been obsessed with Pokemon for his whole life.
She was tired of Pokemon stuff occupying her home for so many years.
I said that these napkins were for my younger cousin who is really into Pokemon, and asked if she had any more Pokemon stuff.
She said she didn’t know people were still into that and that there were a few boxes in the attic with her son’s old stuff.
She actually took me inside the house (which I never imagined I’d set foot inside ever again), and let me climb up the attic ladder and take down several large boxes to look through.
The first one had Christmas ornaments in it and other junk, but I freaked out inside when she opened a box jam packed with Pokemon video games in the original boxes, though I kept my cool on the outside.
He knew about Derek’s Pokemon games.
The whole reason I had agreed to go inside in the first place was because I was holding out hope of this exact scenario happening.
See, I knew Derek was obsessed with Pokemon.
Our friend group liked Pokemon back in the day even when other kids thought it wasn’t cool, but Derek was on a whole different level.
He bragged about his Pokemon collection all the time, at the time he had every single main series game in the original box, and in “mint condition” as he always had to add in.
I went to his house once and he was showing me his collection, he yelled at me for touching one of the games, nobody was allowed to touch them except him.
Derek’s mom had no idea that the Pokemon stuff was valuable.
He had many older Nintendo games in excellent condition but Pokemon was his favorite.
He had had a couple of incidents with his mom damaging or throwing away his things, it wasn’t out of malice but just ignorance, as she didn’t think the games or collectibles had any value.
Fast forward into the present day, I was thinking about this when I asked his mother if she had any other Pokemon stuff, she ended up bringing out the motherload.
He was in awe at everything he saw in the boxes.
We opened all of the boxes she had me bring down.
Within the boxes there was the beloved collection of Pokemon games, all very well preserved, as well as several Nintendo consoles, hundreds of games, two dozen binders full of Pokemon cards, etc.
There was also a box of many Lego sets with the original boxes and everything, with many old Star Wars sets.
When I saw Jango Fett I knew I struck gold.
I told her that I liked old Legos as well, and asked her how much for the five boxes of games, cards, and lego sets, and she thought for a second and said $100 a box, or $400 for all five.
This was the best revenge he could imagine.
I told her I would take it all and hauled butt to get to an ATM.
I loaded the five boxes into my dad’s truck and immediately drove home.
I knew there was potentially tens of thousands of dollars of goods here, this was the score of a lifetime and I finally felt vindicated for the $40 Derek had taken from me all those years ago.
His uncle helped him sell everything.
I ended up giving all the stuff to my uncle, who’s a hobbyist ebay reseller.
He offered to sell it all, he was willing to go through the effort and sell everything individually, and despite my insistence he said he wouldn’t take more than a 10% cut of the profits after all fees and taxes.
We went through and logged every single item along with the estimated value, and the total of the whole lot was about $40,000.
40,000 was a poetic number since this was 1000x the value of what Derek stole from me all those years ago.
The money was life-changing.
My uncle sold most of the lot before the end of the summer and ended up writing me a check.
Though it was considerably less than $40,000, it was still a life changing amount of money for me.
I was able to pay off my remaining student loans and put the rest towards a down payment on a new car.
I bet Derek was furious at his mother when he eventually found out she sold all of his collectibles at a garage sale.
He’ll never even know who bought it!
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…
This was both petty and pro revenge.
This reader is worried about Derek’s mom.
Another reader also feels bad for Derek’s mom.
Derek was probably devastated when he found out.
For Derek, this collection was priceless.
Meanwhile, Derek’s mom was probably excited to clear out the attic!
She probably felt badly about it later, though.
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.
