The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, act as legal, financial or credit advice; instead, it is for general informational purposes only. Information on this website may not be current. This website may contain links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser; we do not recommend or endorse the contents of any third-party sites. Readers of this website should contact their attorney, accountant or credit counselor to obtain advice with respect to their particular situation. No reader, user, or browser of this site should act or not act on the basis of information on this site. Always seek personal legal, financial or credit advice for your relevant jurisdiction. Only your individual attorney or advisor can provide assurances that the information contained herein – and your interpretation of it – is applicable or appropriate to your particular situation. Use of, and access to, this website or any of the links or resources contained within the site do not create an attorney-client or fiduciary relationship between the reader, user, or browser and website owner, authors, contributors, contributing firms, or their respective employers.
Credit.com receives compensation for the financial products and services advertised on this site if our users apply for and sign up for any of them. Compensation is not a factor in the substantive evaluation of any product.
For many Americans, a home is the most expensive purchase they’ll make in their lives, usually costing a few hundred-thousand dollars. Sure, other things in life may add up to more in a lifetime, but there are few things with six-figure price tags. Beer is generally not among them.
That is, unless it’s a collectible. Five years ago, a collector bought a roughly 160-year-old bottle of beer for $304 and sold it for $503,300 (free shipping!) on eBay. The sealed bottle of Samuel Allsopp’s Arctic Ale is an incredibly valuable collectors’ item — an Internet search indicates it’s the rarest beer in the world — and the reason it likely sold for so little the first time is because the original seller misspelled the name “Allsop’s,” according to a post from TypoHound.com, a site that helps eBay shoppers search for merchandise posted with misspellings.
I’d say a $500,000 bottle of beer should be pretty amazing, except it seems unlikely a beer brewed in 1852 would taste very good these days. As far as understanding the cost of this item, it’s best to view it as a collectible, rather than a beverage.
Still, when this bottle sold in 2009, new homes in the U.S. sold for an average of $270,900 (median was $216,700, according to U.S. Census Bureau data), and most people finance property. Can you get a loan to buy an auction item?
On eBay, it depends on the seller: Some set their own payment conditions, while others choose one of the default options, like PayPal or credit cards. A $500,000 bottle of beer isn’t the sort of thing you can put on a credit card (not that you’d want to — the interest would be insane, and even if you had a credit limit that high, charging it would slam your credit score) but most people don’t have a half-million dollars in cash lying around. Then again, buying rare bottles of beer isn’t an activity for the everyman. I suppose it’s like most things in personal finance in that there are many fruitful ways to manage your money: Some people invest in property, others invest in really old bottles of beer. To each his own.
Image: iStock
September 13, 2021
Uncategorized
August 4, 2021
Uncategorized
January 28, 2021
Uncategorized