Princess Bargains With The Tooth Fairy

Princess lost a tooth today, so she'll be putting it under her pillow tonight for redemption by the tooth fairy. At our house, the going rate for a tooth is 25 cents. Being the inquisitive little kids that they are, I've had to do a lot of improvising to answer all their questions about the underground tooth economy, the industrial and decorative uses of baby teeth, and the tooth fairy's profit margin. So the whole tooth fairy backstory is quite evolved at our house. Teeth are either made into necklaces, or ground up and used as fairy roofing materials. Fairy teeth being obviously too small and scarce for these purposes, fairies turn to children as a ready source of extra teeth that children may be willing to sell trade for money. They then resell the teeth they collect, recovering the overhead of making all those house calls and making a tidy little profit.

Princess went down to write a note to the tooth fairy on the computer (being 9, she knows who the tooth fairy is). When she came up, she asked if I thought the tooth fairy would give her 50 cents for all the pain and suffering she went through to get the tooth out.

This is the note Princess wrote to enclose with her tooth:

Dear Tooth Fairy,
I lost a tooth. I was wiggling it at school when it got stuck. It hurt like mad. When I got home I showed mom how it was stuck. She pulled the tooth out and plop. Out it came. This tooth sort of has a hole in it so you don't have to drill a hole in it all the way to put it on your tooth necklace.

Yours truly,
[Princess]

P.S. This tooth is 50 cents.

She evidently thinks the tooth fairy will pay more for a jewelry-quality tooth, and that she deserves a higher price for her "pain and suffering". We'll have to wait and see if the tooth fairy accepts the doubling of the price. I wonder if the tooth fairy will buy the tooth at fair market price, leave a note with a counteroffer, or just cut her losses and not buy the tooth at all.