Bordeaux cases or iPad boxes?

The world is a strange place. Last week I sold a cardboard box on eBay for £15 purely because it had the words Apple iPad written on it. Prompted by this marketing success I currently have another such piece of merchandise for sale that nobody is touching with a bargepole at the same price....because it also has the word 'mini' on it. 

At first I though this was a bit odd, as for accessories everything to do with the iPad mini seems to cost more that a full size one (even though there's less physical material in them and, simplistically, should be cheaper, but that's another story). It seems that although the old 3rd generation iPad box was snapped up at £15, the most I can expect anyone to pay for my discarded mini box is about £5 if I'm lucky.

I think this is down to the fact that most iPad Mini's are relatively new, desirable and holding their price. So having a box to sell it in if you are trying to get rid of one isn't that important.

For a 3 year old full size iPad (3rd generation if you are interested) having a box might make the difference between making a sale or not, so they are suddenly worth something in their own right.

All this lead me to thinking.....I bought my original iPad back in 2012....if a new box is worth £5 and the old one is worth £15, this is a 300% profit margin in 3 years and so probably makes cardboard iPad boxes a better investment opportunity than bordeaux wine!

Can you help this child?

MISSING!

PLEASE HELP

This little boy isn't. My sister once ran away from home one evening causing a bit of panic in the house, but was found not long after. Of course that was before the days of computers in the house, let alone the internet. In fact we didn't even have a telephone, but I digress.

I wonder if we had had the internet whether her picture would have been displayed like this to mobilise as many people as it could reach to try and find her? The Internet is a powerful tool and really can help to quickly reach the resources of the public at large to avert tragedy and at times we should be grateful for it.

But listen, just for a moment before you share this picture to help find a boy that isn't missing. 95% (made up statistic by the way) of missing person pictures are either a scam, 5 years out of date, or refer to someone who has already been found; hopefully returned to their family or in more tragic cases, their bodies recovered.

What am I trying to say here? Well, it's this: please check the details before you share the missing son or daughter photo on Facebook and twitter. It takes a few moments to do a google search on the name (e.g. "Dave Green missing Facebook" - search) and find out if it's real and still current. Because if it's a scam or the situation is resolved then continuing to post that picture means that some poor child runs the risk of their photo being circulated on Facebook for years to come and this in itself can be psychologically damaging for people - imagine being stared at by strangers because they have "recognised" you as a missing child, being taunted by school "friends" etc.

Yes, the need to find a missing child outweighs this, but if a quick check on a search engine is all it takes, then if you really want to help the child, please do that check first.

I wonder if this will go viral by the 95% of very well meaning people that will just read the headline and share in the hope of helping to find the boy in the picture?

NB - it's me in the picture and the only thing I'm missing is my marbles :)

PS - I am sorry if I offend anyone of my friends that do forward shared missing person photos - this is not my intention, as in doing so you show hearts of gold that care and this is to be encouraged in a world too full of apathy.