A case of 1978 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru sold for $476,280 on Saturday, setting a record for Romanée-Conti and making it one of the most expensive cases ever sold at auction. That works out to about $39,700 per bottle or about $4,900 per glass.
Christie's said the buyer was from Asia. The sale price was more than three-times the high estimate for the case.
In an interview with CNBC Monday morning, billionaire Wilbur Ross said that prices for fine art and wine have gotten "a little bit extreme." Asked about the Romanée-Conti sale, he joked: "I don't think I have clothes good enough to wear while I'm drinking $400,000 wine. Just save it."
Christie's sold $9 million worth of wine during the three-day sale, with a total of more than $1.6 million worth of Romanée-Conti during the auction. In addition to the $476,280 case, a second case of 1978 Romanée-Conti sold for $301,644, while a case of 1985 Romanée-Conti sold for $285,000—twice the estimate.
(via CNBC)
What makes it even more absurd is that this stuff will still just taste like wine.
ReplyDeleteToo many dollars chasing too few bottles? Well, how about the Bitcoin "bubble" (if it is)? Too many dollars chasing too many Bitcoins? Or too many dollars chasing too few dollars? Too many apples and chasing too few oranges?
ReplyDeleteSorry for a couple typos delivered during work/under deadline a few hours above -- too 'few' Bitcoins, and no 'and' before 'too few oranges' were what I intended. Still some fun thoughts, with or without typos/ADD.
DeleteI'm sorry but wealthy people paying high $ for goods and services is NOT proof of inflation. A better metric would be prices of food and fuel.
ReplyDeleteWell, sorry to you. Prices of assets such as art and wine certainly are an indication of inflation. Where the hell do you think the money comes from to bid this stuff up?
DeleteOn the contrary, this is exactly what one would expect from newly issued currency. The initial recipients have a limited appetite for food and fuel; they can only eat and travel so much in one day. Their appetites for conspicuous consumption, however, are apparently insatiable.
DeleteIn the US, since the beginning of the 1980s the Bureau of Labor Statistics has “adjusted” the methodology of its inflation model 24 times. Along with the hedonic approach, the geometric weighting, and the adjustment for intervention, the surrogate approach is dubious as well. For example, if steak becomes more expensive, statisticians assume that instead people will eat hamburgers. The following chart shows the divergence of the new, official rate of inflation and the former method that was still in use in the 1980s. This also explains why the real income of the households has been stagnating for years.
ReplyDeletehttp://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/11/26_Heres_The_Truth_Governments_Dont_Want_The_Public_To_See.html