Pure gold replica of Darth Vader mask goes on sale

154 million yen for 15 kilograms is about double the cost of the gold (assuming it's pure) at today's bullion prices. Hope the lucky purchaser will be happy with their investment!

It's always interesting to see what they come up with, but who bought the solid gold Godzilla from the previous year? or the solid gold Mickey Mouse from the year before? Or the $5 million cast of Lionel Messi's foot? I'm guessing the answer is nobody and it's just the same gold getting melted down and recast year after year. Good PR though.

what is the going rate of a solid gold mask of a fictional mass murderer?

I'm in.

Pure gold. Solid gold. 15 kilograms. 1.4 million dollars. Hmm. So you are paying something like DOUBLE for the "artistry" of the Darth Image. I don't see a lot of art there worth seven hundred thousand dollars or thereabouts. I see at least one other person above did the math. And somehow I doubt anybody smart enough to do the math is dumb enough to buy it.

This is a trap for fake nerds.

My personal opinion: Star wars (or similar franchise) movies are just milking its fans now. It's sad to see how people are being made fool by these "influenced" craze and artificial demand of movie merchandise.

I'm guessing some of the commenters here must never go to restaurants. Because when you buy a meal, they actually charge you more than the base cost of the ingredients.

You must also make your own clothes right? Because the cost of buying something in the store is more than the cost of the base fabrics.

And I suppose you must build your own furniture as well, since a chair or a desk costs more than the lumber used to make the furniture.

Various Stormtrooper and Darth Vader masks might be more interesting than cloth masks though. Get right on that Japan

"I'm guessing some of the commenters here must never go to restaurants. Because when you buy a meal, they actually charge you more than the base cost of the ingredients."

I am guessing a certain commenter engages in gross over-simplification and the stuffing of straw men. Because, you know, flipping a burger is not the same as carving a replica of a B movie prop. But one guy gets paid 5 bucks an hour to do it, and the other guy gets 700,000 dollars.

In other words, no reasonable person would deny that craftsmanship has value. What some people are questioning is whether a Darth Vader head replica of a prop originally crafted out of plastic is really worth as much as my car plus an equal amount of gold bars.

Am I belaboring the point? How about this? If you had 14 Tesla automobiles, which require craftsmanship and technology, you would have to sell them all to afford this. Then when people start laughing at you for being such a schmuck, you could melt the Darth head down and admit you were playing the fool, but all that fake "artisanry" would still cost you 700,000 dollars. Probably more than the annual incomes of a few people posting here.

Or look at it another way. For 700,000 bucks, do you think you could buy your own gold and make your own Darth head? I know I could. If it took a week to do it and I hired a guy, it would STILL be worth it.

I am having no problem thinking about how dumb this Darth Head is, and I go to plenty of restaurants, thanks.

In other words, no reasonable person would deny that craftsmanship has value. What some people are questioning is whether a Darth Vader head replica of a prop originally crafted out of plastic is really worth as much as my car plus an equal amount of gold bars.

Value is whatever the buyer and seller agree upon. If someone buys it for that price, then the answer to what you are questioning is that yes, that's what it's worth. If no one buys it, it's not worth that. Until someone actually purchases it, it's just a hypothetical number that the seller is hoping to get. And as this appears to be a one-of-a-kind item, at the moment it doesn't have a value, as it's never been sold.

What we can say confidently is that it's not worth that value to you. But conversely, I'd say that based on yours and other's comments, you're not the target market, so you not attributing that value to it isn't going to have relevance.

Would be interesting to know how much of that price will be copyright/royalties going to Disney/Lucasfilm.

"You must also make your own clothes right? Because the cost of buying something in the store is more than the cost of the base fabrics."

Wow. Just wow. I was just thinking the other day, I think it was Monday, that the field of Economics had really slid back a few notches since the heady days of Keynesianism and game theory and experimental economics. One would think that society had progressed to the point that "the basics" could be just reliably assumed and people could engage in intelligent discussions of practical matters. One would be wrong.

And here we are. I look at this comment and I think about what Marx might say about surplus value in response, with or without consideration of a society that swaps Darth Head replicas for millions of dollars. A microeconomics professor would offer some comments about opportunity cost. Ricardo might say a few words about comparative advantage in this teachable moment. And Adam Smith's invisible hand would tap me on the shoulder.

Even the premise of this person's point is in question in the modern world because McDonald's actually CAN serve me a burger for LESS than the cost of its ingredients at retail. And I am pretty sure that I would spend more in materials to make a typical dress shirt or jacket than it would take to just buy something assembled in China.

And then I snap out of it. Nobody is really trying to make a point of economics, and people don't understand economic principles nowadays anyway. And no matter what you say about restaurants or clothes or whatever, a person who pays 1.4 million for a gold Darth head is not paying for art or the gold. They are paying for something that has no rational basis whatsoever.

I wonder how much a wooden sled named ROSEBUD would go for, if I found the right buyer.

May the fourth be with you!

I hope whoever buys this prominently displays it in their home, preferably at the genkan. It'll brighten up the day of the Sagawa Kyubin guy making his deliveries. It'll be even cooler if their doorbell plays the Darth Vader music, so you get the music first and then the big reveal.