The blog’s editors and contributors have compiled their seasonal wishlist. Because gifts-to-self (and others) should not be postponed, if an efficient use of capital. As all of these are.
Companies House registration, £12
The UK is one of the world’s countries. Where better to form a business under the name of a loved one rather than your own? Plus, for just £28 extra, you can register by post and not have to use the word “Limited” in your name — not that “Limited” should be considered all that limiting. A Companies House keepsake is a great alternative to star-name registries and souvenir Highland titles, with even weaker KYC.
Basically any NFT, basically any price
Pablo Picasso’s ‘Femme à la montre’ sold last week at Sotheby’s in New York for $121mn, or almost two Beeples. It’s a thing that’s unique while being trivially easy to reproduce, like all NFTs. It looks a child’s drawing, like most NFTs. It’s part of a corpus that’s used for money laundering and sanctions evasion, like many NFTs. It features a boob, like countless NFTs. The downtrend has been broken. Next stop, moon!
M1 Abrams tank, roughly $10mn
In November 2020, Boris Johnson told MPs: “We have to recognise that the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European land mass are over”. A few months later, Russia invaded Ukraine. BoJo may have been left with egg on his face, but you don’t have to suffer the same fate.
Richard Orlinski ‘Wild Kong’ statue, from €700
Every CEO’s been there. Shares are down 90 per cent since IPO and investors want a cohesive strategic narrative when you need to shred powder at Courchevel FFS. Luckily, inspiration can be found in the mountains: why not inspire greatness at head office by installing a giant resin statue of a gorilla in the lobby? Step forward Galleries Orlinski, a seller of nature-themed Eurotrash Funko Pops that look like someone’s third or fourth attempt at using Blender. The big apes go for $220k or thereabouts, which if you lost £540mn in 2022 will probably sound a quite modest amount.
NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU, $30,000
What does it do? What doesn’t it do! It’s loan collateral! It’s a barter currency and a “hood” trophy among convicted felons! It’s the foundation for a libertarian utopia in international waters! VCs desire them. SWFs covet them. Weirdos watch videos of other weirdos taking them out of boxes and sometimes the weirdos also sing about them. There’s a six-month waiting list and premia on the secondary market of more than 30 per cent. Seriously though, what does it do?
Boney M, price on application
What better way to take your mind off the unravelling of your empire than to enjoy a live performance by Germany’s pre-eminent Euro-Caribbean vocal disco act of 1976? Boney M provided the entertainment when René Benko, the sybaritic founder of the overleveraged Austrian prime property group Signa, rebutted rumours of its potential collapse by throwing a party. A complex, strangely structured enterprise of multiple overlapping divisions that was built for a different era and held together by deceit, Boney M are available to book now.
Francis Bacon Triptych, $? per share
Not everyone can afford to own a masterpiece. So how about not owning one? We’ve been promised all year that shares in the painting above, Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer”, will be the first to trade on a newly formed art exchange that’s being set up by Prince Wenceslas of Liechtenstein and a former CDS trader at UBS. To some that might sound like peak-zirp nonsense, but fractional ownership of this type remains an opportunity to split the many costs, risks and responsibilities of owning fine art while removing the burden of ever having to look at it.
Twitter Bird Statue, ~$100,000
Bought at auction in June by a private bidder, the four-foot-tall plywood rendering of a legacy corporate logo appears to have been a more sound purchase than its previous owner and might soon surpass its value in absolute terms.
Ten million dollars, $10mn
You may think you love your parents as much as Sam Bankman-Fried loves his parents. But have you ever given them the gift of $10mm in cash that for reasons of tax efficiency was packaged up as a loan? (Bear in mind that if your parents are Stanford Law School professors who specialise in tax law and the philosophy of personal responsibility, and you are currently in jail having been found guilty of fraud and money laundering, it may be less trouble this year to stick to gift vouchers.)
small caged mammal T-shirt, from £13.52
Show some love for your favourite ONS CPI basket item with this elegant garment.
Further reading
— The How To Spend It Gift Guide (HTSI, previously How To Spend It, except seemingly in this instance, where it is still How To Spend It)
— FTAV swag shop (Redbubble, previously and still)
