Time Value
A pair of eclipse glasses is a cheap piece of cardboard and filter film. Then time runs short, supply runs out, and a cheap object becomes unexpectedly valuable for a few minutes.
Before the August 2026 eclipse, The Guardian reported that glasses which had sold for about £5 in London were being offered for £10, sometimes £20, as shops ran out. One shopkeeper said he sold 6,000 pairs between a 2.30am delivery and a 9.30am sellout.
Who profited?
The tempting answer is: whoever anticipated the shortage, bought early and sold late. But a high selling price is not profit. We do not know purchase costs, labor, failed deliveries or how many pairs were left when the sky returned to normal. Foresight creates the opportunity to capture value. It also creates the risk of holding inventory whose main occasion has passed.
This makes eclipse glasses look a little like options – and unlike them in exactly the interesting way.
A traded option has an underlying asset, a strike price and an expiry. Its premium can include time value; theta estimates how that premium may decay as expiry approaches, all else equal.
Eclipse glasses have no such contract or payoff. As the useful window shrinks, the price may still climb.
After the event, immediate use value falls sharply. But zero is too simple. The American Astronomical Society says compliant, undamaged viewers can be reused – and that a small number can be shared among a much larger group. The glasses may retain future-use, preparedness or souvenir value.
And then there is social value.
We had glasses. Some people around us did not. For a few minutes, possession gave us a temporary advantage. We could have protected it, maximized our own uninterrupted view or tested what someone else would pay.
Instead, we passed the glasses around.
One pair. Several views.
That is what the market price cannot measure. Exchange value peaks around scarcity. Use value peaks around the event. Residual value may linger. Social value can increase precisely when exclusivity is surrendered.
For those few minutes, the glasses were worth more passed from hand to hand than sold to the highest bidder.