Two Christmases ago, I was given an Apple Watch costing almost $500. I know…yikes. It’s certainly not rare but, for me, worth it. It does a cavalcade of things from checking my heart rate to reminding me of appointments. An auction, not long ago, proves everyone has their own values when it comes to timepieces or collectibles or both....
An example includes another watch – this one owned and worn by actor Paul Newman. Paul was no slouch so he wore a Rolex. Those are very pricey watches ranging in price from a few thousand dollars to around $80,000. Paul’s “Daytona” Rolex was nice but wasn’t the most expensive variety. His wife Joanne Woodward bought it for him in 1968. He liked it and wore it when racing. On the reverse his wife jokingly had it engraved, “Drive Slowly, Joanne.”
Today, the collector value of a Daytona Rolex watch is between $40,000 and $80,000. Of course, those weren’t worn or owned by Paul Newman. Once a watch has such a pedigree, its collector value climbs. Sometimes it soars into the stratosphere. Paul’s aforementioned Daytona Rolex did just that. It sold at auction a while back for, I’m not making this up, $17.8 million.
While inflation now is higher than in the past few decades, that doesn’t affect a certain class of buyer/collector who has accumulated unbelievable wealth. Those include the “wacky speculators” who, in 2010, dropped a few hundred dollars buying a thousand or so silly things called Bitcoins. That’s when the Bitcoin price wavered between nine-cents and a dollar. Today, just one of those Bitcoins is worth $35,000. So, 1,000 Bitcoins would be $35,000,000, or about twice the price of Paul’s watch.
There are loads more examples of substantial wealth accumulated in the past 20 years. Sadly, there are even more cases of people hoping to reap immediate fortunes with “surefire” collectibles they plan to cash in after just a few years.
A while back I wrote of one individual who had purchased several hundred boxes of baseball cards from the late 1980s. He squirreled them away planning on future huge profits. Because so many people collected them, he figured the cards had to be worth a fortune down the road. Nope. Too many people had the same idea. Each of those boxes which originally cost him $40 apiece, are now worth just $2. That’s assuming you can find a dealer willing to pay anything for them.
All this should be a harbinger. Items that have serious upside potential are almost never available in large quantities. Nevertheless, there are people out there who would have you believe otherwise – so much so that they often convince themselves of such absurdities.
A great example of that came a few years ago after the US removed Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Because he was such a narcissist, Saddam had his image placed everywhere in Baghdad. He also had his likeness emblazoned on Iraq’s paper money. Many countries ruled by dictators have images of the despots on the currency.
After Saddam was overthrown, the Iraqi government and Central Bank of Iraq demonetized all banknotes bearing his image. They were replaced with bills showing colorful scenes from the Iraqi countryside. Those are in circulation today.
In the early years after the war, US troops found bank vaults piled with the old Iraqi notes bearing Saddam’s image. Millions of those worthless notes were confiscated. While many were destroyed, loads of others were made available to anyone wishing a “souvenir.”
Not surprisingly, some hucksters began selling stacks of the notes with rumors that the bills would be remonetized. They even ran ads selling countless bundles of the bills to fortune seekers hoping for overnight riches. Sadly, too many folks in the get-rich-quick camps bought into the falsehood. The profits never materialized. Eventually, the paper money was revealed to be exactly what it was – merely paper that was nothing more than a souvenir.
Incidents such as these should be a great lesson, particularly about collectibles that are just too good to be true and far too easily attained. Those are the true rarity. After all, money really doesn’t grow on trees. Unless, I suppose, the tree was owned by Paul Newman. Then, it’s another story.
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