The Value Of A Watermelon, A Parable by Bill Roberts

The Value Of A Watermelon, A Parable
This is the story of Joe, an enterprising young fellow who bought 100

watermelons, iced them, and took them to the beach to sell.
He had planned on selling the watermelons for $5 each, but when he

got to the beach he saw a lot of people, maybe 50,000 and no

watermelon sellers.
So he priced his wares at $10 for each ice-cold watermelon.
He sold out in minutes.
He made a nice profit.
He was happy.
Johnny, who was at the beach that day witnessed this red-hot ice-cold

watermelon market. Johnny said to himself, "I can do that. I know

where I can buy a truckload of watermelons for $1 each."
So the next weekend Johnny showed up at the beach with 1000 ice-

cold watermelons. So did 999 other guys. It seems everybody had the

same idea. One million ice-cold Watermelons.
Johnny tried to sell his Watermelons for $10 like Joe did, but he was

only able to sell a couple watermelons. It seems that the other guys

weren't doing any better.
Johnny said "I got to lower my price or I'm going to be stuck with these

things."
So he reduced his price to $9, then $8, and eventually got down to $1.

He was able to sell out at that price, but he only made about $25

profit for the entire day.
Some of the other watermelon sellers weren't as lucky as Johnny. They

were slow to reduce their prices, so they got stuck with most of their

watermelons.
After all, 50,000 people at the beach might seem like a "BIG MARKET,"

BUT when you have 1,000,000 watermelons there is no way you can

sell them all.

What's the Moral?
Now there is a moral to this story, but I would like you to tell me what

it is.
And I am sure that it applies to  real estate. Do you know how?