Store Adds Donald Trump's Picture To $150,000 Gold-Encased iPhones (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNN's report about an iPhone 7 "encased in solid gold, encrusted with diamonds and bearing the face of Donald Trump." Priced around $151,000, it's just one example of the mind-blowing bling sold by Goldgenie, a store in the United Arab Emirates where the super rich do their shopping. "There are very wealthy, high-net-worth individuals all over the world and sometimes its very difficult to buy gifts for them because they have everything," said Frank Fernando, Goldgenie's managing director... But the phones are far from the most expensive item on sale. A gold-plated racing bike will set you back about $350,000. If you're thinking no one would buy a $150,000 Trump phone, think again. In the last month, they've sold ten of them.

Comments

Bargains elsewhere in store

[SuperKendall]

sold by Goldgenie, a store in the United Arab Emirates

I guess all of the Hillary ones they had printed up earlier must be selling at a nice discount now!

Just so everyone knows

[tempo36]

For when you're really rich and want to make absolutely 100% sure that everyone knows you'd rather spend your money on displays of wealth than anything remotely beneficial to anyone else.

(p.s. Remember, when we help the wealthy make more money, they become JOB CREATORS!)

Re:Just so everyone knows

[ShanghaiBill]

For when you're really rich and want to make absolutely 100% sure that everyone knows

If you are really "super-rich", you prefer to keep a lower profile. The big market for "bling" is for posers and wannabes. Do you see Bill Gates or Warren Buffett displaying bling? I have actually met a few billionaires (David Filo, Jerry Yang, Larry Page, Sergey Brin). They were wearing jeans and sneakers or sandals. No bling.

Re:Just so everyone knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you see Bill Gates or Warren Buffett displaying bling? I have actually met a few billionaires (David Filo, Jerry Yang, Larry Page, Sergey Brin). They were wearing jeans and sneakers or sandals. No bling.

It's anti-bling. When you're at that level, you can wear anything you want. Walking into a business meeting where I have to wear a suit, they can show up in jeans and a T-shirt because of who they are. I walk in wearing jeans and a T-Shirt folks will wonder who the hell do I think I am.

Only a billionaire can look like a slob and be taken seriously. See what I mean?

Another example is this restaurant in Greenwich, CT. Suit and Tie for everyone BUT Paul Newman when he was alive. He wore jeans, shirt and cowboy boots - because he was Paul Newman. Even the billionaire Wall Street weren't allowed in like that.

Doing what you want - especially where it isn't appropriate - is a sign of power.

Re:Just so everyone knows

[Opportunist]

Totally different market, totally different mindset. To understand how this works, you'd first of all have to understand the mentality of the target audience.

In the UAE, if you're wealthy and want to "count", you have to show that you have the money. Actually, you have to show that money is so unimportant to you that you can throw it away. And that's best done by buying shit nobody that actually values money would buy. It takes a while to get used to this, but once you understand how status works in that area, the whole insanity starts to make a lot of sense. What matters is not what you do, but how. You have to make a phone call, but you do it on a 150k phone. You have to go somewhere, but you have to drive there with a Ferrari. And of course it has to be some limited edition, because everyone and their dog can simply buy a Ferrari.

You're dealing with people who have a completely different idea of status. In the US, being rich means that you buy a football team because that is somehow an investment. Or you do charity because that allows you to connect with people. Or you do anything else that actually has at least a side benefit. Over there, status is measured by being able to simply throw away money for no tangible return. And to show that you can throw away money, you need to show off crap that is insanely expensive but has no "real" net benefit. A normal iPhone makes calls just as well as the 150k version, but that 150k version shows that you can throw those 150k away without getting anything in return.

Re:Just so everyone knows

[hey!]

When I worked in the non-profit sector I had some old-money (literally came over on the Mayflower types) trust fund kids working for me. I visited their parents' houses and they were full of treasures, but not bling. You had to stop and look to realize that the table you were sitting at was 250 years old or the portrait of great-grandpa hanging int he stairway was painted by John Singer Sergeant. I noticed in one dining room that the side board had a massive cast iron base; when I asked about it, I was told it was the 12.7 liter inline eight cylinder engine from a 1931 Bugatti Royale. When I expressed interest in that I was then shown what looked like a child's toy ride-in car under the piano in the living room, and was told was a tiny but fully functional automobile that had been hand built by Ettore Bugatti himself.

I mean, geez, it's not something anyone actually would have a use for, but as pointless things go it was literally a wonder.

After seeing the ancestral houses I can kind of understand the contempt people like the Boston Brahmins and Philadelphia Main Liners have for the nouveau riche; it's like these people were brought up in a museum full of exquisite and historically significant things. A lot like it in fact; in a way they're more like caretakers than owners, handing stuff they got from their distant ancestors down to their descendants.

And this ladies and gentlemen

[rsilvergun]

is why I'm a socialist. Let capitalism run wild and we'll spend our resources on crap like this instead of Ebola vaccines. And don't say it's a false dichotomy. We are nowhere near ready as a civilization to support this level of veblen goods and a decent standard of living for the remaining 99%. Hell, in my country we'll still arguing over who's gonna pay for type-I diabetics to have insulin...

Re:And this ladies and gentlemen

[hey!]

The scientists in the Public Health Agency of Canada are capitalists?

Re:And this ladies and gentlemen

[Opportunist]

What do they have to do with socialism? You might want to look up the word, it doesn't mean what you seem to think it does.

Re:Fuck yeah

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I'll buy the next ten - V. I. Putin

Why would you want to buy a picture of something, when you already own the real thing . . . ?

Meh.

[Frosty Piss]

Not sure why this is news, I can probably order a case with anything etched on it, even gold if I want, though platinum turns me on more.

Well, it just goes to show.

[hey!]

Being rich doesn't mean you have taste or sense.

This

[rsilvergun]

so much this. People don't realize that just about every major health initiative is funded by the gov't. The basic science in particular all gets done by the gov't because it's not profitable enough quick enough to attract investors. Then a corp moves in, do cheap the finishing touches to turn it into a product and sell back the public works to us.

Re: The most primitive of the rich

[dgatwood]

For the most part, that's true, but there are actually two different groups of people who might buy this. The first are, as you mention, the sorts of people who get rich quickly and get poor again just as quickly. We'll call those "lottery winners" even though some of them get rich through other means, because it is still basically the same sorts of folks who come into a lot of money through some sort of luck and then don't know how to do anything with that money other than spend it.

But you're forgetting another group—people who are so enormously wealthy (the top 1% of the top 1%) that hundreds of thousands of dollars is pocket change. Obviously those folks are not likely to throw their money away on these sorts of things frequently. These are the same sorts of folks who could afford to use hundred dollar bills in the washroom if they so desired, but they don't, because as you say, they didn't get that wealthy by wasting money frivolously. But even wealthy people like to waste money on a lark every once in a while. And given enough wealthy people, even if just a fraction of a percent of the über-wealthy decide to buy one as a joke to get a laugh in the boardroom and then give it away as a Christmas gift to their nanny, or decide to give them as family gag gifts for Christmas, they'd still sell a few.