A lost notebook may carry more private value than the expensive cover suggests.

The price of a thing and what it holds are unrelated measurements. A cheap notebook can contain a year of thinking, addresses that exist nowhere else, and pages nobody was meant to read, while the cover hints at none of it. Losing it is not losing stationery. Value of that sort is invisible to whoever finds it.

Put your name and a number inside anything that carries irreplaceable content. Photograph the pages you would hate to lose. And if you find something that looks unimportant, treat it as though it might be somebody’s whole year.