If any of you are in the market for a wooden briefcase, now is the time to make your move.
Jeffrey Benjamin is keeping me away from the fast-trading world of wooden briefcases for now. Who is Jeffrey Benjamin? I’m pretty sure he’s an undercover operative and he is really good with making things. I’ll explain later.
Many, many months ago I deviated from my pattern of buying odd wristwatches on eBay that nobody else would be caught dead wearing when I discovered a one-of-a- kind, carved wooden briefcase that had been offered. I bought it for just $30. I’ve written about this early stage of my briefcase obsession before in this column. A friend told me that my briefcase was impressive but suggested that to own a rosewood briefcase would bring me true happiness.
That launched me on a two-year quest that eventually resulted in me unwrapping a true genuine rosewood briefcase. He was right, that’s when everything changed. Never again was I a man who had not a rosewood briefcase. That’s where we left off last time I wrote about this.
Enter Jeffrey Benjamin and his rare wooden briefcases. It turns out these were even more special than rosewood briefcases. They are the holy grail of the thrilling wooden briefcase world. People who are foolish enough sell them and ask hundreds of dollars for them — even if they are scratched and battered. I just checked online and even now there’s one posted that looks quite nice and the seller expects someone to buy it for $1,800.
So who was this Jeffrey Benjamin and why are his briefcases so valuable? No one knows. There’s always some reference to the briefcase being from a Jeffrey Benjamin “desktop collection,” but no other details are ever offered.
How is that possible? Somehow this legendary Jeffrey Benjamin came into our world, created desktop collections and vanished. He managed to remove all traces of who he was or how he created his masterpieces from the Internet. He has to have been from the CIA or some even more secret organization that wants to make his desktop collections completely off the books.
It was clear I needed to get a Jeffrey Benjamin briefcase. I discovered I had one huge thing working in my favor. As near as I could figure out, I was the entire market for wooden briefcases. No one else buys them. People can ask whatever they want for a wooden briefcase online but if I don’t buy it, their efforts will be in vain.
This may be due to a well-known, instinctively understood principle that I smartly choose to ignore. That simple truth is that no matter how nice or expensive your wooden briefcase is, if you use it in public, you will look like a dork with a briefcase.
Such things bothered me not, and one day someone posted a very nice Jeffrey Benjamin briefcase on eBay with a starting bid of less than $100 and my sense of purpose in life came into sharp focus. I faced only two obstacles. The most significant is that my wife is a grownup and was under the impression that because I had already purchased four wooden briefcases, I didn’t need a fifth one. This was a serious obstacle because when I discovered this briefcase online, we were traveling through southern Idaho. If she found out I was even considering such a purchase, she would likely leave me at a truck stop. I risked living my life out in Bliss, Idaho, with no hope of ever fulfilling my destiny. Sure, I would live in Bliss, but I would not be happy.
The second obstacle was that I would have to come up with the money for this briefcase out of my personal money. None of my briefcases were purchased with dollars from the family budget. That’s just not done. All such outlays have to come from birthday, Christmas or Father’s Day funds, from money I earn by selling briefcases online or from change I pick up from the sidewalk. So I have to bargain when something I really, really need is offered on eBay.
At this particular time we were abnormally poor, but it did happen to be within six months of my birthday, so I used that to my advantage. After some serious bargaining done in the wilderness of southern Idaho where eventually all of life’s priorities can change, I managed to wear my wife down.
The biggest chip I put on the table was that I said if I could buy this briefcase, I would give up eBay for a full year. I wouldn’t even go out there. My wife thought this was just too sweet a deal to pass up. She thought I went out to eBay too often even though I really only checked it when I was awake.
I got the Jeffrey Benjamin briefcase and, for those of you who like to read about my decisions just so you can feel better about yourself, this is not one of those times. This is one beautiful wooden briefcase. It is a cut above any other briefcase I have purchased or seen. The workmanship is just exquisite. Some people who have seen it have almost complimented me on it. I’m looking at it right now in my den where it is on display, and it brings me dork joy like nothing else I’ve ever purchased. If there was a fire in the house, I would probably save my family first, but I would quickly run over and grab the briefcase before I did.
Somewhere on a remote beach, far, far away, Jeffrey Benjamin sips on a tropical drink remembering his exploits of espionage and intrigue as a secret operative. He probably reflects on his glory days when he traveled in the fast lane, secretly making desktop collections that were sought by all. Little does he know that one lone briefcase would find a home with a dork in Utah and that his briefcase would change everything for that poverty-stricken man.
Or at least it will until November when my year of exile is up and I can return to eBay in search of the next big wooden thing.
Steve Eaton lives in Logan, and he can be reached at Eatonnews@gmail.com