One year, my partner and I went to a Christmas party that featured a white elephant gift exchange. The price limit was $10. I bought the silliest video game I could find from the discount rack at an office supply store.

The gift I opened was a whole-ass digital camera: a Canon PowerShot SD300. The person who'd contributed it—a stranger whose name and face I no longer recall—explained that he had upgraded to something newer, and estimated the market value of the old one at about $5. That chance gift became our household's sole camera for almost ten years, until we finally bought smartphones that had better cameras built in.

(As it happened, that same gifter was the one who opened my vide