Remuera; an intensive development mooted for Meadowbank; ticketed

Gold Bricks

The bloke at the demo yard began waxing nostalgic about bricks. Without much encouragement at all, he was recalling a time when you could pick up second-hand bricks for 10 cents apiece. These days, they go for between $2 and $5 each, as the signs on the various small mountains of them in his yard indicated.

And the reason I’m on the subject of bricks is that, perhaps worryingly, the little bricklaying project I distracted myself with during the first – and some of the second – lockdown, has developed into something bigger, something ongoing, possibly unstoppable.

The brick-walled raised garden I managed to build, with only a little help from others, has started feeling like a first step on a bigger journey, so now I’ve determined on another, even bigger garden, which is how I found myself chatting about bricks to the chap at the demo yard.

I came away with 200 of his $2 ones and a few $5s, which cost that much because they have the names of their makers stamped on them. Now they’re stacked in the backyard, beckoning me. But they’ll have to wait till I get my breath back, which could be some weeks off. I like to contemplate hard labour for as long as possible before actually engaging with it. Also, I have a feeling I’ll be back to see that bloke at the demo yard for more.

He said no one seemed to want new bricks for backyard jobs anymore and he could hardly keep up with the demand for his old ones, though I don’t think he was complaining. He probably knows he’s onto something and I think so too. Which is why I’m sharing this unique investment tip with you.

Not that I’ve ever harboured ambitions to become a financial adviser, but I think I know an opportunity when I encounter it and it seemed mean-spirited not to share it. We live in such strange times that the situation might be coming when banks start charging us instead of paying us for looking after our money.

My friend Sam rang me the other day in a bit of a state after someone had filled his head with talk about “negative interest”. Like many of us, he’s sensitive about his savings and the thought of the bank siphoning off his hard-earned cash had him reaching for his heart pills. I tried to assure him his savings weren’t about to start disappearing, but it was hard to summon a convincing tone.

So I rang him a couple of days later with the hot news on bricks and their investment potential. “Don’t tell anyone else,” he said, but I told him I’d probably share it with my readers. “You might have to move fast,” I said.

There’s no end of up-sides when it comes to investing in bricks. Unlike, say, gold, bricks offer a few fun options. While your one not-very-impressive little brick of gold might make an interesting paperweight at best, real bricks give you serious bang for your buck. You can obviously see what you’ve put your money into and, as well as apparently being deflation proof, they’re weatherproof.

Also, bricks are fun. You can get creative with them, make some temporary walls. A serious investment might make you a maze. Then, in a few years when old bricks are selling for $4 or $5 apiece or even more, you can sell them off and make a very nice return.

And another thing about bricks is that they aren’t the sort of investment you’re likely to become too attached to, unlike, say, works of art which can become impossible to part with.

Though I’m now not entirely sure about that. The one possible downside I can see when it comes to investing in bricks is only just dawning on me as I become increasingly committed to making permanent artworks of them, as I fear I am. And when I say artworks, I simply mean something unique, handmade and unrepeatable, which my walls certainly are.

Though I’m hoping the next ones will be quite a bit less wobbly. — Colin Hogg

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