We all have old family heirlooms and relics sitting in our houses – whether they are our prized possessions or they are in storage in the attic. But are they worth their weight in gold?
Watchshop has conducted a survey and discovered that 42% of the British Public ‘would only consider selling their family heirlooms in times of financial crisis’ but if their family heirlooms were made of solid gold, would their worth be as impressive as these?
The Watchshop has also compiled a list of both historical artefacts and modern day amenities that are worth more than their weight in gold, with everything from nail polish to 19th-century stamps all making the list, as well as cocktails and locks of late musician’s hair.
Featured on the list is Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Mr. President’ dress, which was sold for £3.87 million in 2016. The iconic sheer dress has in excess of 2,500 crystals, all hand-sewn on to the sheer figure-hugging number. If the dress was made from solid gold, however, it would only have cost £3233, which makes it 1,145 X it’s weight in gold.
This is not the first time an iconic dress worn by the late Marilyn Monroe has gone for millions of pounds. In 2011, Monroe’s dress from The Seven Year Itch – made famous thanks to an encounter with a rush of wind from the New York Subway – was sold for £2.8 million.
The most expensive item on the list, gold-wise, is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester. This notebook is believed to have been the most important of the 30 scientific journal allegedly penned by Leonardo Da Vinci and was sold to Bill Gates in 1994 for £27.8 million, making it not only the most expensive book ever bought but also worth 150,000 X its weight in gold.
In 1997, a jeroboam of Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1945 – which has been considered as one of the greatest vintage wines of all time – was purchased by an anonymous buyer at Christie’s in London. It was purchased for just under £240,000 and its worth based on it’s worth in gold is £230,000 making it the closest to its sale price on the list. If vodka is more your style, however, then why not indulge in the Diva Vodka – Triple distilled through ice, Nordic Birch charcoal and finally through precious gems, it is presented in a bottle with a stack of Swarovski crystals through the middle and retails at £771,500 making it worth 3 X it’s weight in gold.
However, the top item on the list is the 1854 Magenta stamp, which was sold at 233,445 X its weight in gold at £7,330,200. The 1c Magenta Stamp is the rarest in the world and was created after a shipment of stamps to British Guiana from Great Britain was short by 90 percent. The 4c stamps were used for letters, which are more commonly found and the recipients were more likely to keep those, but the 1c stamps were used for newspapers which were generally discarded fairly quickly, meaning that once the new shipment of stamps arrived in British Guiana, the old 1c Magenta Stamps disappeared very quickly.
