You might remember the tiny porcelain cup from the Ming Dynasty that broke records when Liu Yi Qian bought it for HKD $281,240,000 back in April. The cup is nicknamed the “chicken cup” as a family of chickens is painted onto it. If you’re balking at the bidding price, rest assured that it comes with a really nice box.
At the time, he was the 200th richest person in China, reports the BBC. Imagine the even smaller cups the other 199 people would have bought for even more money!
A rep for Sotheby’s, which held the auction, said that the cup with an 8-cm diameter “is really the holy grail when it comes to Chinese art”.
After Liu placed the winning bid on the cup, he had to use his credit card to settle the bill because Chinese laws do not allow such large amounts to be transferred directly from China to Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg. But even black AmEx cards have limits, contrary to popular belief, so he had sign 24 different receipts for amounts of up to HKD $12 million at a time.
And when you are that rich, you don’t even notice that your black American Express card racked up 421,860,000 points in the process.
“He didn’t even know,” his daughter said to Bloomberg just this week. “He is checking now to find out about how many points he can get.”
So what can the already-rich get for free with that many points? Oh, just 28 million frequent flyer miles. That’s 7031 round-trip flights from Hong Kong to London with Virgin Atlantic by our calculation.
Or you can go really wild at ParknShop and buy $180,000 worth of groceries with gift vouchers.
Photo: Sotheby’s website
