8 Dumb Ways to Blow Your Money

Let’s imagine a world before March 11th, 2021, before Beeple shook the earth and sold an NFT for $69 million, summoning a monsoon of NFT press releases. What did we consider an unreasonable purchase? What did we talk about? If you are not a tech blogger, artist, art critic, gallerist, crypto trader, or CNBC consumer, please let me know. About anything.

Back in January 2021, a collector paid $396,000 at Heritage Auctions for a $20 bill with a Del Monte banana sticker underneath part of the bill’s Treasury Seal and serial number. The provenance dates back to 2004 from an ATM in Ohio, which dispensed the note to a student and has now been auctioned three times.

“Collectors immediately fell in love with it,” Dustin Johnston, Vice President of Currency Auctions at Heritage Auctions, was quoted in a press release. Sorta not really explaining why this $20 bill is worth 19,800 pristine $20 bills, he added that “the placement of the ‘Del Monte Ecuador’ banana sticker is ideal.”

But why $396,000? Why not throw in an extra 4k for a smoother “four hundred thousand dollars” which rolls off the tongue at a cocktail party and is far more aesthetically appealing in a press release headline?