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Merchant Days Chapter 10 - Scraps Have Unintended Value
🕑 Added 2026-01-15 23:54:05 +0000 UTCThe customer is always right.
All over the world, across and over every dimension, every trader, merchant and Merchant had one or two things to say about that accursed phrase and the sentiments shared were pretty much the same — to hell with it.
The phrase — those infernal words that followed them across every plane of existence — was no doubt spouted by weak-boned and dubious merchants who were desperate enough to adroitly fellate the ego of a customer just so they could sell their ill-gotten goods.
Every merchant knew to sell their goods at a profit – obviously – but a good merchant would sell his at a reasonable profit, and in doing so a boundary of respect sits between both parties and preserve their dignity and reputation.
Now if this basic etiquette was followed, such a phrase would have never been birthed and some greedy customers would have never gained the audacity to somersault their way into the face of an honest merchant and demand a lower price that was no doubt below profitable margins.
However, on the flip side of this coin, it helped both parties to filter out their target audience.
In this case, Isaac was a clear example. While he was still in the midst of raising up a reputation, the sheer quality of his services made the projected price seem fair and shielded him from ever making a desperate sale. If anything, it had the mirror effect of having some of his customers always being the ones in a position to make a desperate sale.
So no, the customers are not always right. If anything they were usually in the wrong.
The bell at the door clinked excitedly to welcome in a new customer and alerted Isaac who was wiping off the dust from his shelves to stop for a moment and return to his station.
“Good day, my friend. What can I help you with?”
The customer, a man wearing a beanie and a long worn coat with patched up fingerless gloves, looked up at Isaac suspiciously before hobbling over.
“What up pal?” The man said in almost a whisper as he gave the shop around a sharp eye. “This, uh, here a pawn shop?”
Isaac smiled and gave a nod of understanding. “We buy and sell junks, amongst other stuff, so if you’re looking to pawn something off, you’ve come to the right place.”
“Really?” The man looked up in surprise and smiled conspiratorially. “Sweet.”
“I got some few trinkets to lob.” He pawed his hands into the pockets of his coat to bring them out but stopped and asked, “say, I don’t really got ‘em receipts for these, hope that’s cool?”
“As long as they don’t need proof of ownership to function then it’s fine.”
“Alright then.”
He dropped off some items on the counter; a couple earrings, a pearl necklace, a thumb-sized gold nugget, an inscribed ring and a watch.
He fidgeted slightly in place, cautiously looking back at the door and around the store. “So yeah, uh, how much can I get from these?”
Isaac picked up the earrings, the necklace and the ring and inspected them one after the other before setting them to the side. He paid no attention to the man’s wary and distrustful gaze, and picked up the gold and watch and inspected them a bit more than the others.
“So how much?” The man asked the moment he dropped them, quite impatient and anxious but Isaac took it in stride.
“$4,780.”
The man did a double take, clearly surprised by the amount, before a mask of anger and suspicion marred his face. “You trying to scam me or something, man? That’s real gold right there. I ain’t taking anything less than sixty-five hundred.”
Having dealt with situations like this a million times, Isaac simply picked up the gold, held it up to the man’s attention, and remarked in a matter-of-fact tone.
“$120, the purity isn’t all that high.” He dropped it and picked up the pearl and earrings. “$460. Polished and quality make, that’s all.”
He held up the ring and the watch, looking amused as the man’s bloated temper had quickly evaporated. “A signature piece ring, no more than $500. A vintage collector item watch, not really from a big brand or a signature piece. It’s just an old valuable watch. $3,700.”
Yes, quite surprising that the gold was the least valuable thing among the items he was pawning off.
The man’s eyes quickly zeroed on the watch with the clear eyes of someone who had unknowingly disrespected his golden goose.
“You probably wouldn’t have gotten it past five hundred if you had pawned it off anywhere else, except through a legal appraisal.” The man glanced between Isaac and the watch, his mouth suddenly feeling dry. “Is that an acceptable trade or will you be taking it somewhere else?”
“What? No, no no.” He vehemently shook his head. “Yeah, I’ll take it. $4,700, of course I’ll take it.” There was a smacking of lips and rubbing of hands that followed the statement.
Isaac had no problem buying junk like these, even of subpar quality, as this was also his way of contributing to the economy of Merchants. He usually sold most of his junk to smaller Merchants whenever he started emptying his inventory, and he wasn’t the only one who did this as other Merchants too sold the lower quality items remaining in their inventory to their younger peers who preferred buying in bulk. It was a symbiotic system that reflected the essence of every Merchant.
The man took the money quite eagerly and counted it right there very slowly and only when he confirmed the price did he look up with a grin on his face and stretched his hand to Isaac who shook it in good faith.
“Thanks man. I’ll, uh, look around the house to see if I got any other junk lying around.”
“No problem.” The man turned to leave, happy as a kite when Isaac called out to him. “Might I interest you in something you might need, like say, a new coat? Or maybe something more… exclusive?”
The man stopped, looked around the store more closely and leaned in over the counter and whispered.
“Say,” he covered one part of his mouth with the back of his hands, “any chance you can deal me a piece and some rounds?”
Isaac nodded in understanding and reached under his desk.
.
………
[POV: With Peter Parker]
Peter was of the opinion that good things just happened. There was no rhyme or reason to it – it happened because it happened. Good and bad, it came in measures, equal or disproportionate, and he had learned very young to take in silence and thanks. Uncle Ben taught him that.
Life had been somewhat stable after he finally put himself into a semblance of balance between his ordinary life as Peter Parker and his unordinary activities as Spiderman.
And while he was in staunch support of the opinion that a high school kid, no matter their circumstances, had no business in the dangerous field of heroics, Peter had found that he was really bad in listening to what other people told him to do, even if that other person was his logical subconscious.
He had grasped desperately at his identity as Spiderman so quickly that it definitely wasn’t healthy. Maybe he actually needed therapy? If not for his suicidal decisions then surely for the unbelievable things he’d seen in his growing tenure as Spiderman.
Now as Spiderman, he’d found himself easily coming into possession of things that had he not been brought up morally upright, he would have found himself dabbling in light criminal activities.
He would rather give up being Spiderman than ever dishonor Aunt May by being a criminal.
Now that the fact has been established that he hasn’t dabbled his webbed fingers into petty thievery, that did not change the fact that sometimes things came into his possession that he most times couldn’t just handover to the police. Things like data sticks, some tiny nifty tech parts, some pint of obscure chemicals, synth materials and a dozen other things that he never knew could be found by taking late night swings around Queens.
His little mancave – An extended closet – was already filled to the brim with things that he no longer had use for since he’d solved most of the cases they came from and now they were just waiting to be used as spare parts for future webshooters or any handy gadget idea he came up with.
Unfortunately, he was currently in a bind. He’d exhausted the integrity of the excuse that they were just passion projects and school stuff to May and he needed to find a way to get rid of some of them because they were starting to clog up his small room.
He couldn’t just throw away spare parts. That went against every single one of his instincts as a tinkerer, a tech nerd and a teenage boy.
“This is harder than I thought.” He mused sadly as he looked at the bags of junk parts he was about to donate to the garbage truck.
“I’m glad you’re finally getting rid of some of those junks. Your room was starting to smell like Ben’s old attic.” Aunt May stopped her work in the kitchen, looking satisfied as he hauled the bags to the curb.
He shrugged, trying to downplay the sentimental pain he was feeling. “I didn’t want to put it off any longer so… junk?”
Aunt May laughed. “So you finally accepted that your ‘spare parts’ are junk. You’re just like your Uncle Ben.”
Peter however had a growing hopeful expression on his face as something tickled his brain. “Junk… junk! Junk ‘N Stuff!”
“Still junk.” Aunt May said with a self-satisfied shrug as she turned back to her boiling pot.
He bolted in a run, grabbed a shirt along with his bag of junk and hauled his ass out the door.
“Thanks, Aunt May. I’ll be back soon.”
“Boys.” She shook her head with a small laugh.
Swinging would have taken him two or three minutes but seeing Spiderman swinging around in the day with garbage bags was a sight that would’ve instantly alerted the police, Peter thought as he cut through alleyways in his run towards that strange junk store.
“Thank goodness.” He didn’t know why he thought the shop wouldn’t be there but he was still there and still open when he got there.
“Hopefully he’ll want to buy some of these.” He murmured to himself as he pushed open the door. Getting a few bucks from these was better than everything just getting recycled.
“Oh? And I was starting to think you forgot about me, kid.”
He smiled sheepishly as he saw the storeowner sitting behind his counter with a book and a cup in his hands.
“Not quite, Mr. Isaac.” Well he didn’t really forget about it, but he’d been so busy with everything else that he never actually found a reason to come back again, until now that is.
“I’ll take your word for it then.” He placed the book and the cup to the side and looked at the bags Peter carried with a raised brow. “Got something for me in those bags?”
“Eh, well, not really. I mean, I thought, um maybe there might be a couple of things you might be interested in buying…” The embarrassment was too great and the little awkward laugh at the end didn’t help at all.
Now that he thought about it, he could have taken his time to sift through the bags for things good enough to sell instead of running all the way here with garbage bags.
“Sorry about the bags…” he apologized sheepishly while scratching the back of his neck.
Thankfully, and also a weight off Peter’s conscience, the man didn’t look irritated as he simply shrugged and rolled up his sleeves.
“Eh, no worries kid. I’ve had worse.”
What happened after that was an hour of critical appraisal of carefully selected pieces of junk that Mr. Isaac decided were ‘moderate enough to still have some value’.
It wasn’t much but Peter was glad that at least some of those things had a marketable value. Who would have thought?
