

Apple founding papers sold at auction for nearly $1.6m  - tpatke
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16170953

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yason
I can only ask "Why?"

It's the buyer's call of course but generally things that have no obvious
utilitarian value are bought for either of two reasons: future value (expected
rise in value or expected keep of current value) or emotional reasons (such as
belongings of close, personally meaningful people or beautiful items).

It's hard to imagine vibrant aftermarkets for these founding papers so it must
be a combination of feeling closely connected to Apple's founders and huge
amounts of money: enough for a million to become peanuts.

Still the money alone wouldn't explain it: I probably could pay one 1/1000th
of my annual income (that'd be one million if I earned a billion each year)
for those papers but I wouldn't because I can't think of a reason why.

~~~
jcr
The reason to buy them at that price is bragging rights. You probably just
lack the required vanity, and that's a good thing.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html>

"One thing you learn when you get rich is that there are many degrees of it."
--PG

With 20K in seed funding, that 1.6M could help to start 80 startups. Even with
the claimed 90% failure rate, the odds are you'd have 8 successful companies
employing people, creating wealth, adding value, and providing things people
want. It may not result in bragging rights amongst the rich and famous, but
the world would be a better place. It's not the wealth of seed and angel
investors that's impressive, instead, it's what they _do_ with their money.
Extravagance like this auction makes the differences painfully clear.

~~~
marvin
Well...the 1.6 million dollars didn't mysteriously disappear when these
documents were sold, they were exchanged with someone who will presumably at
some point use them for something else. So the purchase was definitely
extravagant, but no one was hurt in the process.

