The Sotheby’s auction house has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by investors who regret buying Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that sold for highly inflated prices during the NFT craze in 2021.
Nfts could have been a revolutionary technology and we instead had a bunch of hucksters racing to reinvent scams with it.
These silly things, according to the article, are still selling for $50k each. There are still greater fools to sell to, they just aren’t as rich. The current owners can still walk away with about 20% of their initial “investment”. They themselves will be the greater fool if they don’t unload them onto someone else.
Should’ve invested in beanie babies like the rest of the smart people.
Back in the mid-90s I had a friend who inherited $40,000 from her grandmother and spent all of it on $75 Fossil watches, the kind that were based on old cartoons like Popeye etc. And it took her a while to do it since she would drive to malls within a few hours of her and clean out the department stores that carried them. That’s over 500 watches, a few at a time.
She was adamant that this was an excellent investment, but these are on eBay now for $50 to $60. At parties she would pull out the collection and start showing them to people (no touchy, of course) as if there was something intrinsically interesting about a cartoon Fossil watch. The sad thing is, with $40,000 in hand she probably could have bought two or three times as many from a wholesaler and maybe eventually actually have made some money.
Nope. Too bad, they knew what they were buying. That they convinced themselves the value they attributed to it would remain or increase is entirely on them. The fact that so many others saw it through a realistic lens means they had the same ability and chose not to.
But that said, the proceeds for them should also get clawed back and 100% put toward scam identification education. Neither side in this one should walk away enriched.
That’s the whole point of legitimate auction houses like Sothby’s. They pay experts to provide some legitimacy and sanity. It’s one thing for me to say that a kids finger painting is worth 50k, it’s a different thing for a trained art appraiser at an auction house to set that price.
Sotheby sets the initial prices and provides estimates of value. They were supposed to be the responsible adult in the room. Now if they values them at say $1000 and they sold for 100,000k that’s on the buyer. If the value was set for 80k and it sold for 90k that’s a different story.
Honestly I’m ok with them keeping their money, afaik everyone knew where they were buying they were just dumb enough to think it would ever be worth something. If we want to claw back money from people we should start with the ones ruining the environment to make the line go up
This is the part about wealthy people that I just love. If muh investment pays off, f-off society, I was smart and made a wise investment. I deserve to keep 100% of the proceeds. But when things go south, “Save meeeeeeeeee, you [society/regulators] shouldn’t have let me go through with it”. Then we’re back to the socialism they say they hate so much and that they lobby their own money to deny to the common folk.
Oy vay
You get to hold a marriage certificate. She could also be married to someone else in France, California, Australia and Germany. All those marriage certificates would be equally valid.
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