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You have just got to get an Apple iPhone (it says here). They are so amazing. You can make telephone calls on them and everything.
And do you know what one will cost you? Take a guess. The same £200 it costs in the US? No chance. Over in the UK it cost £269.
As Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple notes: “Sometimes you get what you pay for.” And some times you don’t. Sometimes you get a bargain. Like with noodle.
John fancies a cake, but he has no money. Poor John. What he does have is a bag of cherries. And he finds that the baker will trade one of his cakes for John’s cherries. The deal is done and both sides are happy. This is known as bartering.
Years ago, John and the baker would have pooled their goods in a tithe barn, a repository for local goods. Nowadays, swappers can stand in the street with their goods in one hand and a sign in the other or opt into something like a Local Exchange Trading System (Lets).
Let’s say that John’s cherries are worth 100 Lets. He can input his details into www.Letslinkuk.net and find that the baker has done the same with his cake. Swap done. It is that simple.
There are about 30 such schemes in London and about 450 nationwide.
I see that a suit worn by the Welsh Pelvis Tom Jones has been sold on eBay. The suit, worn by Jones in 1974, is beige. It measures 30inch at the waist and 42 inches at the chest. As the advertorial boasted, the outfit has “what appears to be sweat marks under and around the arms”. It sold. For £155. Dry cleaning bill not included…
The Economist looks at how much cash you should have in your pocket.
The textbook economic model says you should keep your pockets bulging with cash. According to Harvard's Greg Mankiw, given a few reasonable assumptions about how much an imaginary professor spends each day in cash, the time it takes to visit an ATM, the value of his time, and the interest rate in his account.
The Baumol-Tobin model yields a very specific prediction: The prof should take out $1200 from his bank three times a year and hold an average of $600 in his wallet.
But almost nobody does this, which poses a puzzle. According to Mr Mankiw, the fear of losing one's wallet or of getting mugged doesn't get you far. He says his students are attracted to the idea that cash "burns a hole in your pocket" while a check card doesn't. True for some people, perhaps.
Work it out. Work out what you are worth an hour and how long it takes you to get cash out of an ATM.
Then work out how often you don't have cash and a friend pays...
Shoes. Most need two. Some need one. Jake The Pegg required three. But if you are rich you get these.
Worth £62,000 (for two), this pair of ruby, sapphire and diamond-encrusted Rene Caovilla sandals are on sale at Harrods.
To guard the shoes, a live Egyptian cobra was hired to patrol the shoe counter.
(The cobra is bost useful and practical; it too can be turned into a pair of shoes.)
The Times has a question for its readers: “Want to save the world?" And in case yor reply is "No" or "Depends", it supplies an answer: "Sponsor a walking shark."
This is your chance to name ten newly discovered creates.
The organisms have been located in the waters off Papua. And for the right donation you can have one or more of them named after you.
What odds the Kerching Fairy Basslet? Suggested price: $150,000. Give now or the yellow fish gets it!
In 2004, a monkey discovered in Bolivia became known as the Golden-Palace.com monkey after attracting naming bids of $400,000.
Earlier I told you all that James Bond memorabilia is highly collectable and thus worth money. But for those who have no such items, the news is that just about anything can be sold.
The vital word is “antique”. What marks an antique from a worthless piece of tat is its price, or rather, the price someone is prepared to pay for it.
The popularity of such television shows as The Antiques Roadshow and David Dickinson’s Bargain Hunt has made antique hunters of us all. But since only a few of us have a clue what we’re looking for, best thing is to look anew on what you already own.
That picture in the loft that you hate with a passion might be worth thousands of pounds. Is the long-forgotten Hornby train set you had as a boy really so worthless?
Christie’s, the once venerable auction house, sold the bikini Ursula Andress wore in the movie Dr No for £41,000. That sale might never have gone ahead had the actress not found the item lurking in her loft.
The message is clear: where there is Bond, there is brass.
First editions of Ian Fleming’s original James Bond story, Casino Royale, are now worth about £12,000. That’s a healthy sum, and represents a nice profit for those who paid around £400 for the same edition in the mid-1980s.
You might not have the books collecting dust in the attic, but you could well have one of the Corgi model cars based on the film Her Majesty’s Secret Service. A complete set of 21 cars will earn you big bucks, but even one could fetch a couple of hundred pounds at auction.
You work from home. You have no office. When on the move you are out of range.
I have been working with a marketing guru who works in an attic at home.
But when he moves, he needs to stay in touch. Now he can. This is great:
Anyone with £1million to spare can buy a supercar with brains.
The car can, it says here, read the driver’s mood and adjust the music to suit.
The makers of the DiMora Natalia SLS 2 sedan are excited by their product (cue Donna Summer).
It boasts a 14 litre, V16 ‘Volcano’ engine, creating 1,200bhp.
This may mean something to some of you. To others it is just a very expensive car with lot of chrome and a massive price tag.
It reaches 60mph in under four seconds. And can reach a top speed of 300mph.
And the Californian-built car is practical too. It has four doors to enable mum and dad to get the children’s car seats in and out of the back with ease.
You have hammered your plastic pals and are in possession of a small mountain of tat.
Shopping for luxury goods is a mug’s game. Why buy at full price when the January and mid-summer sales sell the same thigns for much less?
Among your haul are electronic goods - DVDs, computer games, add-ons for computers and lap-tops.
These are valuable goods that need to be taken care of. So, when the shops assistant offered you insurance on your lavish purchases, you began to think.
