The "Flintstone House" and when your chilhood junk reaches outlandish values...

Most of us have said, "I wish I still had the _____ that I had as a kid.  That _____ would be worth a lot today!" That fill-in-the-blank item we wish we still had often takes the form of a toy, but have you ever discovered that some other childhood possession you once had reached an outrageous value?  Well, I just made that discovery, and it is weirdly connected to an unofficial Bay Area landmark.

Anyone who has traversed I-280 through Hillsborough has seen it.  It looks like a network of conjoined bubbles.  For nearly ten years, it has sported an orange paint job that makes it even more noticeable.  It is affectionately referred to as the "Flintstone House," and it is easily visible from the Eugene A. Doran Memorial Bridge.  Most Bay Area residents have pondered the origins of this house.  We have also pondered that one burning question: "What does the interior look like?"  Well, hold onto your butts because the iconic Flintstone House is for sale.

The listing goes live this week.  You can peruse the official web page here.  If you want more info about the design and history of this home, I also recommend that you visit the on-line agglomeration arcane attractions known as Atlas Obscura.

I remember my first glimpse of the Flintstone House very well.  It was one year after relocating to the Bay Area in 2000.  The house was still painted in it's original off-white color.  I immediately thought of "Barbapapa's New House," which was a children's book that was well-loved in our household growing up. 

The book is centered around a family of amorphous, blob-like, shape-shifting creatures known as Barbapapas.  The Barabapapas are depicted living in a semi-urban neighborhood in what appears to be a nice old Victorian house.  Mysteriously, the Barbapapas are rendered homeless when a roving band of driverless, possessed demolition machinery targets their domicile.

Well, you can't keep a good Barbapapa down because they migrate to the burbs and build their dream home.  The process by which they build the new house is of particular note.  They inflate their gelatinous bodies, then pack mortar around themselves until they have created a network of rooms that resemble an overgrown cliff-swallow nest.

Ultimately the pack of vindictive heavy machinery returns to try to demolish the Barbapapa's balloon-house, but the Barbapapas fight back.  The demolition machines wind up getting their own ass served up on a platter, and the Barbapapas live happily ever after.

Well the correlation between the Bay Area's Flintstone House and the Barbapapa's house was more spot on than I could have imagined.  The Flinststone house was fabricated with a method that involved large inflated balloons being used as a form for sprayed on concrete.  This method is known as "monolithic dome construction."

With the news of this real estate listing, I was reminded of how much I enjoyed that beloved children's book, "Barbapapa's New House."  It really contains all the most important story-book elements: shape-shifting blob creatures, demolition of historic structures, homelessness, hippy-home construction practices, and urban sprawl.  The most important lesson, though, of all that the Barbabpapas teach us, is that when faced with a sentient, migrant gang of indiscriminately destructive heavy machinery, violence always prevails.

I decide to hop on Amazon and see if I could get a copy to share these important life lessons with my son.  My eyes wound up popping clean out of my head when I saw the current value of this, now out of print, book.  After reeling my eyeballs back in using the optic nerve as a makeshift winch cable, I realized that I was not hallucinating the current prices for this book.

The phenomenon of what drives something to become collectible is as mysterious as the Barbapapas themselves.  Whatever the reason, English language, hard-bound editions of this book are selling for no less than $2,000.00.  In fact, at the time of this posting, the cheapest copy available on Amazon is a used copy in "good" condition for $2,142.03.

In light of this discovery, I immediately emailed my mom to see if she had held onto our copy.  At this point, it seems unlikely.  I will update if there are any further discoveries.

As outlandish as the price of this book may be, it can't hold a candle to the cost of the infamous Flintstone House.  The house is a relatively modest 2,700 square feet, with three bedrooms and two baths.  It is listed for $4.2 million.  On the other hand, it looks like it was built by the goddamn Barbapapas.  Based on the price of the book, the Barabapapas appear to crap gold, so maybe that house is worth it after all...

UPDATE!: Obviously I can't type fast enough to keep up with the market demand for this childeren's book because, in the time it took me to compose this blog entry, the price for a hardbound English-language edition of "Barabapapa's New House has climbed to $2,152.87.