Investment for retirement, for the future, combines the practical and the romantic, though it’s not often sold like that. Planning for a world in which the Bucket List becomes the To Do List inspires many people. But in a stressed economy a new market emerges as financial need meets love of the rare and beautiful, creating a new kind of safety net.
In search of the reliable asset, one that holds its value and provides for the investor, a burgeoning market brings nostalgic owners together with investors looking for a connection to history and to value. The market essentially is a stock, a share, in great works of art that can be bought and sold as owners feeling the pinch of this economy look for liquidity while investors look to preserve wealth in timeless treasures. Basically, an owner possesses the asset while an investor owns fractional interest in the item. When it comes time to sell, the investor will share in the future liquidity event.
It's not difficult to understand. When “Seize the Gray” won the Preakness, more than 2,500 people shared in the winners purse. And a similar market exists for those who own not racehorses, but items of lasting value. Recently, in fact, a rare, gold, 3,000-year-old Mycenaean funeral mask from Crete came on the market, a treasure of ancient Greece and now an investment opportunity available for modern day treasure enthusiasts. That’s not something you can buy at the mall or online.
For those contemplating such arrangements, it’s like a reverse mortgage of sorts.
Imagine the widow, whose husband bought what seemed like a charming little Renoir painting in his pre-war youth, but in today’s economic conditions needs to pay her bills. But the thought of parting with her glimpse into her husband’s heart is hard to bear. Such a treasure can be sold as a fractional interest security to investors who know that the market value of such a resource may increase substantially over time. It’s almost as if that masterpiece is a virtual puzzle, available for ownership in pieces.
This fractional puzzle piece can come in many forms including non-fungible tokens (NFT), security token offerings (STO), common stock and even membership in a non-government organization (NGO).
Nothing is quite as irreplaceable as items of historical value.
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford plays the history lover in Dr. Indiana Jones. A part-time history professor and almost full-time treasure hunter, he looks for things of ultimate worth … in film after film, drawn not just to the gold or jewels that may be part of the make-up, but the artistry and meaning of an object. The whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
Near the end of the first movie, Ford’s character confronts his archeological nemesis, threatening to blow up the Ark of the Covenant, a treasure of unimaginable historical value to the world and to the Jewish people.
But his adversary, Dr. Rene Belloq in the film, calls his bluff, telling the Nazis with him (the ultimate treasure thieves) not to be concerned. He and Jones share a passion for the true worth and meaning of items made special by time and by significance, as well as from that which people used to create them.
“We are simply passing through history. This…This is history. Do as you will.”
And Dr. Jones does not follow through on his threat. As the movie is decades old, most of us know how it ends. And many of us feel that same pull to connect to our past in our present.
There is something beautiful about an investment opportunity that provides liquidity for an owner, bespoke asset classes for an investor, and a moment of connection to greatness for all of the above.
A Hippocrates said, “Life is short, the art long.”
