The modern investor can quickly get it very wrong. As soon as he gets around to finally buying a six-thousandth of a Bitcoin, the price plummets, only to recover again when the investor has decided that crypto bros are stupid in the meantime. He is ridiculously late to join the booming chip manufacturer Nvidia. Trading in gold sounds like the early Middle Ages. And he is too much of a loner for ETFs. But he hears that everywhere, he still has to make provisions for old age somehow, and that’s why this column suggests a place with potentially breathtaking returns to anyone who tends to get chills when it comes to the subject: the flea market.
In 1988, the British woman Flora Steel strolled through a collection of supposedly worthless Africa illustrated books in the English Midlands Abba-Plates. There she discovered a silver brooch, which she bought for 20 pounds. Steel pinned the brooch to his lapel for a few years. She liked that. Until at some point she didn’t like it anymore. Then the brooch disappeared into the drawer, where it would lie for another two decades until the world learned of its real identity.
It wasn’t until 2023 that Flora Steel stumbled upon an episode of the BBC documentary “Antiques Roadshow”, a program for junk enthusiasts, while scrolling. The presenter raved about brooches that he would love to see in real life, made by the famous English architect and designer William Burges in the 19th century. Flora Steel saw this – and understood. “For heaven’s sake, that’s mine!” she thought, she now said New York Times.
Somewhat delighted, she had the brooch auctioned off now, 36 years later. An investment of 20 pounds resulted in a return of 9,500 pounds, and if you ignore inflation for the sake of simplicity, the result is a return of 47,500 percent that even Nvidia and Bitcoin pioneers cannot ignore.
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