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Finer Things
Rare and Expensive Items
What they are and what they are worth
By Jennifer Lewis
Currently the most expensive piece of art that exists in the world is No. 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock. This piece is an abstract that was done in 1948. It was created on an 8 x 4 sheet of fiberboard. Large amounts of thick brown and yellow paint were drizzled on top of it. This formed what appears to be a chaotic bird's nest. The art work was sold by David Geffen in 2006 for a record price of just over 140 million, thus making it the most expensive artwork ever sold. Jackson Pollock was known for his contributions to the abstract expressions movement. The original owner was Samuel Irving Newhouse. He had it on display at the museum of modern art before it was sold to David Geffen. It later was sold by David Geffen to David Martinez. However, according to a press release on David Martinez's behalf he didn't actually purchase the painting. So it remains a mystery as to who actually has possession of the No. 5, 1948, which is currently the most expensive piece of art in the world.
Cashmere is one of the finer things in life and very expensive. But why is that? First off cashmere is the under down shed of goats that live in the high and dry plateaus that surround the Gobi Desert. This stretches from China into Mongolia. The coarse outer hair on these goats repels the weather. Under that layer lies a much thinner fiber, cashmere. This is what insulates them from the bitter cold. Cashmere is expensive because there are a very limited number of goats. It takes four years for one of these rare goats to grow enough cashmere to make one sweater. Each goat gets combed by hand every spring. After that the fleece is collected and sorted by hand. The cashmere is usually knit on hand-operated machines. The limited amount of the fiber and the handwork that is required to convert the fiber into an elegant garment both factor into the expensive cost of cashmere's high prices.
The rarest paper is a stamp. It is the most expensive and the rarest stamp in the world. It is known as the 1856 one-cent "Black on Magenta" of British Guiana. It is a rectangular stamp that is printed on magenta paper with the corners snipped off. Since the corners are clipped off it gives it a octagonal shape. In the nineteenth century, stamps of the British Guiana were printed by a British printer. This stamp has been sold to so many different people. It has been studied and identified as a rare stamp. This rare stamp has sold for amounts of $240,000 and $935,000 at auctions.