Oh, my God! I've been cheated!
What? What did you buy?
It's a brick! I can't believe how stupid I was. Damn it!
What is it? Why did you buy a brick?
There was a guy on the sidewalk. He had three new boxes, Panasonic video camera boxes. He said he had to get rid of them quick.
And?
So he said he'd sell me one for twenty dollars. A four-hundred-dollar camera for twenty bucks.
And it's a brick?
Yes.
I can't believe how stupid you are. Why didn't you open the box?
I wanted to. But he said, no, the box is still in its plastic wrap from the store. If it's opened, other people won't believe it's new.
So he had the boxes wrapped in plastic.
Yes, it was the kind of perfect plastic wrap that comes with new products. Look, it even had a bar-code price sticker on it! It looked brand new.
But why would a guy be selling new video cameras for twenty dollars?
He said he had to get rid of them. They were stolen.
Aha! Now I understand. You were trying to buy stolen goods on the sidewalk. So, what I think is, you deserve to get cheated!
C'mon, don't blame me! I thought it was a new camera. We could use it. We were even thinking about buying a camera. I don't understand how he could have such a perfect-looking box.
That's no problem. He just has a friend who works in a shop that can do plastic wrap. That's easy. And probably it's the same shop he got the boxes from. Maybe his friend works in an electronics store. They sell video cameras there. Probably they had a couple video camera boxes lying around. So they get the idea of wrapping bricks to sell to fools like you. Twenty dollars a brick. That's a good profit if they can sell enough bricks.