...and that spare change adds up to, roughly, twenty million dollars, well, you could spend it on one of the few remaining copies of the Magna Carta.
Yeah. The Magna Carta.
A rare copy of the Magna Carta, the document that enshrined human rights in English law, is to be sold in New York.The copy owned by the Perot Foundation is expected to fetch more than $20m (£9.94m), auctioner Sotheby's says.
The copy on sale, dating from 1297, was bought by Ross F Perot in 1984 and is the only one in private ownership.
King John sealed the original Magna Carta in 1215, outlawing imprisonment and the seizure of property without due legal process, including trial by jury.
The Perot 1297 manuscript, bearing the seal of King Edward I, is due to go on auction in December.
It was on view until recently in the National Archives in Washington.{...}
If you were, for instance, a Russian oligarch, who could usually be counted on to have more money than sense---i.e. you buy soccer teams rather than investing sensibly; you buy your dumbass girlfriend boobs, ass implants and then lavish those plastic parts with jewelry; you, like the Japanese purchase of Rockefeller Center in the 80's, invest in London real estate at the height of the market, etc.----this would be your chance to prove to the world that you are, indeed, not an idiot. You could then hand it over to Vlad the Impaler, er, coughcough, Vladmir Putin, to try and buy your way back into Mother Russia. You are, after all, missing the borscht and for all your money were unable to find someone to make it just like Mom used to. But that's neither here nor there---you want back into Mother Russia and this is just the thing to get you there.
Ah...ain't it fun when your imagination takes off on a flight of fancy? God only knows who's going to buy the thing.
It'll probably be Steven Spielberg or some idiot movie star, and then they'll use it not only as a tax break, but will hold it up to decry the tyranny of the Bush Administration, etc.
Posted by Kathy at September 26, 2007 03:12 PM | TrackBack