When Broken Is a Feature, Not a Bug
When “worth more broken” stops being a collector quirk and becomes a control-loop problem
Did you crash into a light pole, or the Eiffel Tower? Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s paying a premium for James Dean’s Porsche because the Ford he hit was interesting. They’re paying for Dean. I know the other side of that coin personally — I put a TR-6 into a pole someone had painted flat black, and no amount of story turned that fender into anything but a repair bill. Most damage is that. Ordinary math, running the ordinary direction.
This article is about the narrow set of cases where the math runs backward — and about a mechanism that’s quietly changed what “backward” even means. It used to be a market question: does enough of the world agree an object’s history is worth more than its function. Now, increasingly, it’s an engineering-and-legal question: does the party who built the object even permit you to find out. When the manufacturer holds veto power over whether repair happens at all, “worth more broken” stops being a collector’s eccentricity and becomes a control loop — one with an off switch somebody else is holding.
Herbert Roberts, P.E. — 30+ years in aviation R&D across two companies. 8+ years analyzing accidents for attorneys under my P.E. license.