EclectEcon

Economics and the mid-life crisis have much in common: Both dwell on foregone opportunities

C'est la vie; c'est la guerre; c'est la pomme de terre . . . . . . . . . . . . . email: jpalmer at uwo dot ca

. . . . . . . . . . .Richard Posner should be awarded the next Nobel Prize in Economics . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Cigarette Butt Sells for $5300 (US)

When I read the headline about this sale, my first reaction was , "What groupie paid for what celebrity's cigarette butt and why?"

It turns out that
The cigarette was smoked at 11:59pm on 9 December 2004 by the owners of popular Auckland bar Malt.
New Zealand introduced a law banning smoking in most public places at midnight on 10 December.
The cigarette butt was described on the auction website TradeMe as a "priceless Kiwiana collector's item".
The successful bidder, who has not been identified, also received a certificate of authenticity, and a mounted display case.

I hope it was a really nice display case.

Sometimes people get a lot of utility from the process of acquiring an object, but not from the use of the object; this seems like one of those times. [h/t to BF for the pointer]