But where is the obscenity? The money hasn’t been destroyed, it’s simply moved to somebody else who can then choose whether to use it to solve world hunger

the obscenity is that the person who spent that money hasn’t used it for something of any value to humanity. when you’re spending that much money, it should be for the good of the many, not for a trinket.
if you can show me that the seller uses the money for the good of humanity then fair enough, but is that likely?
I think it’s criminal.

Da Vinci is probably the best known artist in the world, and there are something like 15 works that are known to have been painted by him, only one other is in private hands. It’s no wonder this reached such a vast price. For some folk $450mil is change. Bill Gates, remember is worth something approaching $87billion, so this would be 5% of his total wealth, wouldn’t notice the cost.

Hummm

Think of all he people that were employed in selling the painting:

The security guard
The restorer
the auctioneer
the driver

what do they spend their wage cheques on?

The seller of the painting – who knows what they will do with the money. Maybe they will give it away to charity.

Maybe they will buy a new yacht (people are employed making those). Maybe they will invest in companies that employ people – thus improving peoples quality of life. Maybe they will leave it in the bank and they will lend it to first time buyers.

who knows. its not all bad.

Thing is though… it’s:
[video]https://youtu.be/YzVxAppVRs0[/video]

😀

what do they spend their wage cheques on?

servicing debt.

Bill Gates, remember is worth something approaching $87billion, so this would be 5% of his total wealth, wouldn’t notice the cost.

one of the richest men in the world, but I bet he wouldn’t have paid $450m for some scribbles.

The seller of the painting – who knows what they will do with the money. Maybe they will give it away to charity.

Probably won’t though.

Hasn’t the Louvre just opened in Dubai? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned up there.

I suppose rare in the sense that the artist finished very few paintings. Compared to someone like JoLoMo who reckons he knocks out 3000 paintings a year (in almost the same breath as complaining than non of them end up in national collections)

I was being a little facetious.

I meant, how can a unique work of art (where all original works of art are unique) be anything other than rare, or even more pedantically, it can’t be rare, it’s just unique (where rare suggests there are very few but still more than one).