The reason why there are so many lost pencils and the bigger picture. 

Admittedly, I am a loser — no, not in life (at least I hope so), but I keep on losing my belongings. For whatever reason, I keep on losing expensive things from tennis rackets to minor things like my water bottle. However, my biggest problem is with pencils.

Over the two semesters of my freshman year I went through two boxes of 40-pack mechanical pencils. That’s right, I used around 80 pencils in one year of high school. Now I don’t think I’m just a forgetful person; I never lose my laptop, phone, or glasses.

Over the summer, my friend and neighbor Kyle introduced me to, as he would say, “real” mechanical pencils. Instantly, I fell in love with them, and immediately I began researching them, but not buying them. If you’re wondering why I never bought any, it’s because of the price tag. On average, a “regular” mechanical pencil costs 25 cents, a trivial number to most of us at Troy High. However, “real” mechanical pencils range from 5-25 dollars (with even some in the triple digits), and I was not ready to pay for a singular pencil that I could get a 40-pack for. However, once I got one in my hands, magicilly, I never lost them. 

Let me tell you why.

The Economics of Pencils

In Troy High School, the “regular” mechanical pencils are everywhere. There are a lot of mechanical pencils out in the wild. Found rolling under desks to be buried into backpacks, students like myself lose them almost as quickly as they get them. I’ve noticed that in Troy, no one really cares about losing pencils. Just like me, students would leave it behind and think, “It’s not worth it to go back and get it.” However, with lower income communities, for families who struggle to buy school supplies, there are far less pencils being misplaced, especially mechanical ones. 

This trend can be explained by the scarcity vs. abundance phenomenon. In environments where resources and money are abundant, buying a 40-pack of pencils for ten bucks seems almost insignificant. I for one thought this way, thinking that these “regular” mechanical pencils were easily replaceable. However for “real” mechanicals, the price tag per pencil compared to income, while still small, makes it much more noticeable, especially if they add up.

The Bigger Picture

This phenomenon of pencils extends way past itself. For humans, we tend to value the things that are more expensive to us. Lost a pencil? There’s a box of spares. Broke one? Who cares? This is exactly how wealthier communities view cheap, replaceable things. For things that are expensive or have meaning, people rarely let it go out of their sight, let alone lose it. Think about the last time someone lost their paycheck or expensive watch compared to when people lost the remote.

I am happy to say out of the four “real” mechanical pencils I have, I have not lost a single one — at least not yet. Want to know the secret to not how to be that big of a loser (the person who loses their things)? Place value in everything, no matter the price.