Weinbau in den Vereinigten Staaten
Analyzing the case of the trendy consumers, who are indifferent to the nationality apart from its trendiness, is more complex. Such a consumer, if in possession of American wine, might fallaciously reason: "I currently have 1 American wine. If I trade for a German wine, I will have an expected value of 1.25 American wines. Therefore, I will be better off on average if I adopt a strategy to temporarily trade away, as the American loyalist did." However, this is similar to the "two envelopes problem", and the gains from Siegel's paradox in this case are illusory. The trendy consumer who uses the American loyalist's strategy is left with a 50% chance of 0.5 bottles of a newly popular trendy American wine, and a 50% chance of 2 bottles of a newly unpopular non-trendy American wine; to the trendy consumer this is not a material improvement over having a 50% chance of a bottle of trendy American wine and a 50% chance of having a bottle of non-trendy American wine. Thus, the trendy consumer has merely broken even, on average. Similarly, the trendy consumer also would not gain utility from adopting the German loyalist's strategy.