If you’re among the super-rich, you need to ensure everyone else knows you’re a member of the club. What better way is there to achieve this aim than with good old fashioned treasure. Unleash your inner King Midas with these fantastically extravagant items, which are among the most expensive objects ever created.
Time-piece
Watches can be a potent symbol of wealth, and are a sound investment due to their ability to keep both time and value. Celebrities and the wealthy are no strangers to glamorous time-pieces. When defining the value of an item, many factors come into play. Objects encrusted with diamonds are valuable not least because of the relative rarity of diamonds when compared to other precious stones. Top level craftsmanship is another factor that impacts the overall price tag of an object. The third consideration is the story behind the piece, which explains in part the value works of art can attain to.
Among the most expensive mechanical watches in the world is the Breguet Grande Complication Marie-Antoinette. It is encased in gold with a skeleton face that displays the mechanisms at work. It’s a pocket watch commissioned by an ex-lover of the last French queen, Marie Antoinette. Work began on the watch in 1782, seven years before the French revolution and with it, Antoinette’s execution. The timepiece wasn’t completed until 1827, 40 years later. It’s current value sits at around $30 million!
Phone
Smartphones are increasingly becoming a high-value accessory and effective means of showing off your extravagant wealth. The majority of the most valuable custom smartphones available on the market are iPhones, which makes sense given Apple’s aspirational and premium branding.
Swedish company Golden Concept specializes in producing limited run, ultra-premium versions of popular smart devices. One of their most outlandish creations is the $25k iPhone Sugar Skull Edition. At its heart it’s an iPhone XS Max, but it’s virtually unrecognizable beneath encrusted layers of bling. On the back of the phone is, for some mysterious reason, a huge 18-karat golden Skull. The chassis is amplified with the inclusion of no less than 137 individual diamonds and the battery case is lined with, of course, premium alligator leather.
Roulette Table
The casino game of Roulette has a glamorous reputation, so it’s unsurprising that custom tables have been of interest to the rich and famous. There is, however, one that literally shines out above all others. Designed by mosaic artist David Arnott and designer Debbie Wingham, it was commissioned by an anonymous client as a birthday present for their son.
Typically in Roulette, the wheel contains 37 pockets, numbered zero to 36 and accompanies a numbered table upon which bets are placed each round. On this super premium edition, Arnott encrusted the wheel and it’s numbers with over 4.8 million dollars worth of diamonds. The table itself is made of a tiled mosaic of some 35,000 24-karat gold tiles. Included in this most extravagant birthday gift is a diamond encrusted casino chip, itself worth over $1.3 million. The entire ensemble is glued together with a mixture of poly-filler and diamond dust, making it by far the most valuable and extravagant Roulette table in the world. Nowadays, roulette has evolved so much that we can find different versions even online, although the object is still the same as the one designed by David Arnott and Debbie Wingham.
Automobile
You might assume the most valuable car in the world is an up to the minute luxury hypercar, and it’s easy to see why you might be mistaken. 2009’s Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita had a price tag of $5.1 million, 2013’s bespoke Rolls-Royce Sweptail creaks in at $13.9 million, and Bugatti’s latest dream machine, La Voiture Noire, is worth an eye watering $20 million. But this is pocket change.
There has been one car that has held its value, and with it the crown of the world’s most valuable car for many years, and that is the Ferrari 250 GTO. Constructed between 1962-64, there are only 36 250 GTOs in the world, making it a supremely rare car. Three of the top ten most expensive cars in history ever to go on auction were 250 GTOs, with the latest being sold at auction in 2019 for a staggering $72 million to American Businessman and Ferrari aficionado David MacNeil.
