Commodity items may be singularized and revalorized in markets for second-hand goods. The market for singular goods, often cultural or aesthetic items, depends upon collective assessments of value, where the nature of value is embedded in the cultural community. Exiting studies have concentrated on the work of experts and practitioners within markets as they construct goods as valuable. As research begins to see valuation as a nexus of social relations, so it becomes important to study how valuation practices organize markets that span countries and socio-economic categories. We examine the valorization practices of second-hand bicycle traders in Hungary. These market intermediaries salvage obsolete discarded steel bicycles and reconstitute them into fashionable vintage bicycles: sought-after subcultural fashion accessories and collectors’ prized items. We propose a theory of value bricolage to describe the process of constructing value through the skilful combination of matters at hand, material, social and imaginary: scrap frames, spare parts, online resources, fan websites, and valuation communities.

One dynamic for the entanglement of law might be the mobilization of law from below. The myriad mobilizations of law by local social struggles around transnational relations refer to presumed precedents from other situations and other jurisdictions, and claim the applicability of norms from other legal orders. Rumours of rights entangle law. Such mobilizations from below rely on strategic comparisons, sometimes conjectural and tentative, and a belief in law’s coherence. From their position of relative weakness, they appeal to any norm that might provide legal arguments. They struggle to make these norms binding, and hence for their trans-systemic validity. This chapter argues that these entanglements strive for relational coherence – a coherence that is simultaneously trans-systemic and unsystematic. It is trans-systemic inasmuch as it refers to norms from various normative orders, and unsystematic to the extent that it does not move towards an intra-systemic logic. Yet such entanglement might lead to cases being treated increasingly as singular, that is, in relation to their unique characteristics. This is evident in out-of-court settlements in which transnational legal struggles frequently end. The paradox is thus that entanglements engendered by struggles seeking the trans-systemic validity of norms increase attention to the singular characteristics of a constellation.