Bruce Marchant says he’s found the protection he needs against stock market gyrations: in the arms of an amazon in a white bikini.
She adorns his vintage poster of the 1958 sci-fi flick, “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,” which 10 years ago cost $5,000. Today it’s worth $16,000 -- a 220 percent return.
“In the past decade things have really shot up,” said Marchant, who owns London-based Reel Poster Gallery, “If you are a shrewd collector, there is no question they are a good investment.”
The movie posters are among a slew of alternative investments that are outperforming traditional assets, from Hermes Birkin handbags to Apple 1 computers to Nobel Prize medals, as collectors bet on rarity and star value.
Prices are rising as an increasing pool of wealthy individuals chases a limited number of items. In 1994 Bill Gates paid a record $30.8 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex. The 72-page, handwritten notebook could be worth as much much as $60 million today, according to Cassandra Hatton, a senior specialist of books and manuscripts at Bonhams New York. It sold for $5.6 million at auction in 1980.
Gates is one of a new generation of collectors who made their money in tech and display a nerdy bent for scientific scribblings and devices, says Hatton.
’The Imitation Game’
A 56-page notebook belonging to Alan Turing, the British mathematician whose cracking of the German Enigma code during the Second World War was the basis for the film “The Imitation Game,” sold for more than $1 million at Bonhams’ New York auction in April to an anonymous bidder.
The auction house estimates a letter penned by Charles Darwin may sell in New York on September 21 for between $70,000 and $90,000.
Aging geeks who held on to their original Apple 1 computers are sitting on a windfall. Bob Luther, a self-described serial collector, picked one up for $7,600 in 2004 and sold it at Christie’s in December for a cool $365,000.