Priceless! W H E N
M O N E Y
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O B J E C T
The world’s most expensive goods, experiences, collectibles, and business deals
P E R F E C T F O R T H E P R I C E L E S S P E O P L E I N YO U R L I F E
CHAPTER ONE
Bare necessities Given a limitless budget, gathering life’s basic requirements—a home, furniture, clothing, and transport—becomes an intensely pleasurable experience. Surrounding oneself with the finest of things allows for the enjoyment of wealth on a daily basis, while projecting an enviable aura of taste and refinement.
CHAPTER THREE
Living large A grand home and stylish accessories set the tone of a luxurious lifestyle. But it’s out in the wider world— dining in famous restaurants, staying at the best hotels, indulging in expensive pastimes, and traveling to farflung destinations—that serious wealth can be most conspicuously flaunted and life lived to the full.
PORCElAiN
Pinner Vase $82,000,000 Named for the home suburb of its English vendors, this eighteenth-century vase not only achieved the highest price ever paid for porcelain and for a Chinese artwork, but also became the most expensive antique ever sold.
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ppropriately, when he brought the gavel down for the second time, it broke, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. Undaunted, auctioneer Peter Bainbridge hammered his lectern emphatically once more, and then, amid cheers, confirmed the sale of the Qing dynasty vase—for a recordshattering, unprecedented, and entirely unexpected £43 million. It would have been extraordinary at a major auction house, Sotheby’s or Christie’s say. But for a one-man operated saleroom in an outer London suburb it was unheard of. Bainbridge himself stood to earn a commission of £8.6 million, more than his business could turn over in ten years. Yet not even he was the most astonished person, among many, in
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the room that day, November 11, 2010. Already heading for the exit, gasping for air, eager to remain anonymous as dealers and journalists reached for their phones, were the vendors, elderly housewife Gene Johnson and her son, Tony. Gene had inherited the vase as part of the modest estate of her sister, Patricia Newman. After receiving a flyer from Bainbridge’s, the local auctioneer’s, she decided to have it valued. The estimate alone had left her in shock. But this, now, was beyond belief.
Unmistakable Quality When Luan Grocholski, valuer for Bainbridge’s, had first spotted the 16-inch-high, yellow and blue vase on a shelf in the company’s cluttered
Origin
Jingdezhen, China Date
c.1740s Latest saLe
2010
seLLer
Bainbridge’s, Ruislip, london Buyer
Unknown Price
£51.6 million ($82 million)
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storeroom in September 2010, he experienced a frisson of excitement, but kept himself in check. What were the chances of it being genuine, here in Ruislip, 5,000 miles from China? Nevertheless, he asked if he could take the vase home to study it and Bainbridge, unperturbed, agreed. Exquisitely decorated with floral patterns and fish motifs, the vase bore, on its base, the reign mark of Emperor Qianlong (1736–95). But then so did many fakes. More significantly, however, the mid-section of the vase consisted of a “reticulated” latticework of porcelain, revealing another patterned vase inside—a highly intricate “double-walled” design that could have been achieved only in the era’s most sophisticated
potteries. Won over by the impressive workmanship and reassured by further investigations, Grocholski decided the vase was genuine. He returned it to Bainbridge, along with his valuation: between £800,000 and £1.2 million.
A New Breed It was, in retrospect, a cautious estimate. Following the spectacular economic growth of China in the first decade of the millennium, a new breed of buyer had entered the market. Often working for immensely wealthy Chinese magnates and buoyed by growing national pride in early Chinese art, they were willing to spend big. By 2005, rare pieces were fetching $25 million. In October 2010, just before the Bainbridge’s auction, Sotheby’s in Hong Kong set a new record for a Chinese vase: $32.6 million.
cash in the attic? We all hope to come across one somewhere: a dusty old item that, on closer inspection, turns out to be worth a fortune. And it does happen. After all, the priceless Venus de Milo, one of the world’s most treasured sculptures, was found by a farmer in a field in Greece in 1820. A first printing of the US Declaration of Independence was discovered behind a painting bought at a Pennsylvania flea market in 1989 for $4—and recently fetched $8.1 million. And with today’s seemingly insatiable market for Chinese antiquities, you never know. In 2011, a set of Chinese rhino-horn cups presented on the television series Antiques Roadshow in Tulsa was valued at $1.5 million. So, dream on!
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The vase’s decorative style and reign mark indicate that it was most likely made in the 1740s, in the workshops of Jingdezhen, in eastern China.
Shrewdly, Bainbridge timed the auction for a week when a major sale of Chinese art was taking place in London. He also rented a room in the capital and put the vase on display. Soon, Chinese dealers were circling. Like others, they no doubt wondered how the vase had reached England. The vendors’ anonymity was at this point being preserved, but, behind the scenes, even they weren’t sure, only hazarding that it could have been brought back from China by Patricia Newman’s husband, William.
A Face in the Crowd On the morning of November 11, Lot 800 nestled in a simple cardboard box, placed casually on a table behind the auctioneer’s podium. When “the vase” was announced, there was a collective intake of breath followed by spontaneous applause. The bidding started slowly. Grocholski stood calmly to one side of the podium as the price soared: £1 million, £5 million, £10 million … Even at £25 million, five bidders were still in the hunt, but at £40 million they were down to just two. After the final price was announced—as
Bainbridge put it, “the most wonderful, wonderful sum of money”—the successful bidder, a casually dressed man in his 30s, representing an anonymous Chinese buyer, stepped forward. Smiling modestly, he shook Bainbridge’s hand— and then disappeared into the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are coming to a conclusion … We have the most wonderful, wonderful sum of money … Sold!”
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Bagging a Bargain T H E g R EAT E s T l A N d B U ys i N H i s TO Ry
Some of today’s most priceless parcels of land, ranging from cities to vast tracts of modern countries, were originally picked up at bargain prices.
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ncient emperors could dispense with territories on a whim, which led to some unusual business arrangements. In 305 BC, Seleucus I, ruler of the Seleucid Empire in southwestern Asia, struck a deal with Indian Maurya emperor Chandragupta. Having fared badly in recent battles, Seleucus decided to cede a swathe of territory covering much of modern-day Pakistan in return for … 500 war elephants. Suddenly, Chandragupta found himself with an empire spanning all of northern India. All in all, a pretty good day at the office.
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To many Americans at the time, handing over a check for $7.2 million to buy Alaska seemed like a calamitous waste of money.
Colonial Clinchers Disingenuous deals were a distinctive feature of the colonial era. In 1835, Australian explorer John Batman acquired 600,000 acres of land, now the site of the city of Melbourne, from the Wurundjeri people, in exchange for a pile of blankets, some flour, tomahawks, knives, scissors, and shirts. An earlier,
even more notorious deal was the purchase of Manhattan Island by the Dutch in 1626. Colonist Peter Minuit “bought” the island from the local Lenape people for goods worth 60 guilders (about $1000 today). Which works out at about 0.1 cents per square foot. The current price? About $1000 per square foot.
Prize Purchases The United States assumed its modern shape thanks to a series of spectacularly favorable land deals. When, in 1803, a cash-strapped Napoleon offered America the sprawling realm of Louisiana—much of the modern central United States—for a mere $15 million, it was a pitch too good to reject. The so-called Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the size of the country, saw off the French, and gave the United States control of the Mississippi River—all for a rock-bottom 3 cents an acre (a still healthy 42 cents per acre in today’s money). An even more profitable deal was done with Russia for Alaska in 1867,
One that gOt away In 1946, eager to consolidate its military defenses in the light of the looming Cold War, America tried to buy the world’s largest island, Greenland, from Denmark. But even an offer of $100 million wasn’t enough to tempt the Danes.
netting 586,412 square miles for $7.2 million or 2 cents an acre. Sure, it wasn’t the most desirable real estate, but given Alaska’s timber and oil reserves it now looks like a heck of a bargain. Three years later, Canada trumped even that deal by buying Rupert’s Land—3 million square miles of what is now central Canada—from the British Hudson’s Bay Company, for just $1.5 million. Assuredly one of the best or worst deals of modern times, depending on which side you’re on, was China’s temporary lease of Hong Kong to Britain. Britain took on the barren, infertile island in the mid1800s and turned it into one of the world’s great economic powerhouses, only to have to hand it all back in 1997. Ouch! Prime, high-rise real estate now covers almost every inch of Manhattan Island.
Big BUsiNEss
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