Captain’s Blog: What’s the deal with buying famous people’s useless shit?
When I say “people buying famous people’s shit,” I’m not literally referring to famous people’s dookie. I’m talking about the practice of buying an object once owned or used by a celebrity for an exorbitant amount of money. This past year sandals Steve Jobs wore sold for $218,750. In 2006 William Shatner sold his kidney stone for $25,000. In 2008, Scarlet Johansson blew her nose while taping “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and then auctioned off the tissue for $5,300. No wonder Colin Jost could afford that Staten Island Ferry Boat. He’s got mad tissue money coming in. In all these cases, the money went to charity, but someone still paid for a used sandal, a used tissue, and a kidney stone. What do you do with the Kidney Stone once it’s delivered to you? Display it on a piano? Show it off to chicks at da club? Cosplay as Captain Kirk peeing out his kidney stone. For me, the question isn’t why celebrities were selling this stuff but rather why a market for stars to sell their garbage exists. For there to be a supply of celeb’s goods, there must be demand. BUT WHY THE DEMAND? It’s a fucking kidney stone.
Anthropologists and psychologists might say the demand comes from the "magical law of contagion," which is the belief that a person's essence can be transmitted through objects they have touched. When you buy Steve Jobs sandals, you feel like you’re getting a little of Steve Jobs himself. Meaning some people see the hit film “Like Mike” as more of a documentary on gaining magical powers than a kid-friendly comedy that launched the career of Jesse Plemons. In October, a pair of game-worn Michael Jordan Sneakers from his rookie season sold for $1.72 million, the theory being they were more expensive because they were worn by Jordan himself.
A Yale University study by George Newman and Paul Bloom proved this contagion theory. They analyzed several high-profile celebrity auctions: the estate of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Onassis and the estate of actress Marilyn Monroe. “They found items viewed as having come into close contact with well-liked famous people sold for more than low-contact items.” “To investigate further, the researchers surveyed 435 adults and asked them how much they would pay for a sweater owned by a famous person they admire. They also asked whether their bid price would change if the sweater were sanitized. The researchers found that when it came to well-liked celebrities, sanitizing the sweater resulted in a 14-per-cent drop in the respondent's willingness to pay top dollar for the object.
According to “science,” people love famous historical figures’ DIRTY shit, explaining why false teeth worn by Winston Churchill sold at auction for more than $23,000. A pair of Queen Victoria’s underwear sold for $12,000, and Hitler’s toilet sold for $15,000 at an auction. Unless you’re Kanye West and you're hoping for a Like Mike situation in which by using the toilet, you become Hitler, I have no other explanation for why someone would pay $15,000 for Hitler’s toilet.
This has got to be some money laundering operation because the magical touch theory is not working for me. The most accurate answer I can conjure might be that people are just weird, and we like spending money on shit we don’t need. Perhaps we’re doing this so we have a good story or something to brag about or have some weird fetish about walking around in Queen Victoria’s underwear. I’m not judging. What I consider funny might be dope to someone else and vice versa. I’m sure there’s someone out there who would pass judgment on me for the amount of sports memorabilia I own, and I would deem someone weird as fuck if they told me they just bought Hitler’s toilet.
In conclusion, I do not have a proper answer for why people purchase famous people’s shit? But I’ll give you an inside track on this, I’m about to start listing every tissue I ever use on eBay, and one day, when I’m famous, I’ll be popping champagne on my boat with all of my tissue money. Now, to misquote my friend Bruno Mars, “I wanna be a billionaire so fucking bad, to sell all the things I ever owned. I wanna list my toilet in Forbes Magzine and sell my underpants like the Queen.”
