These made-to-order corkscrews from Sveid are €50,000 apiece. The small hook that is used to operate the corkscrew is 18-carat gold, but is also available in platinum, while the body is made from "aviation titanium." The video on their site does make it seem like I lovely bit of engineering, but all I can think about is how much wine €50,000 would buy. Surely a lifetime's worth.
Product Page [Sveid.com via Born Rich via Goldarths.com]
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Contemplating the sort of person who would drop fifty large on this sort of gadget reminds me of a story that I heard about some rich asshat--name escapes me--who built a wine cellar by buying as much as he could of whatever vintage happened to be mentioned in Playboy or Forbes or whatever, and then letting it sit in his cellar and age past the point of drinkability. That's the sort of person who would buy something that does basically the same thing as most Swiss Army knives, perhaps with a little less effort.
Why is it that no-one would think it worth deriding a €50,000 sculpture, but as soon as you make it do something useful it becomes ridiculous?
An object of beauty, if you believe Kant, has purposiveness (the sense of being useful or needed) without actual purpose. When you make a tool, people analyze it on the basis of it's functionality - this particular tool doesn't seem to be significantly 'more functional' than a $10 corkscrew. By making it 'useful' given the object purpose, and intentionally or not, it changes how people judge it.
@Pork Musket: True, but my point is that the adoption of rational criteria for judging an object of beauty is itself an irrational act. Logically, a useless item (ie a work of art) rendered however minimally useful should be worth more, not less, if the usefulness does not detract from its beauty.
For €50,000, it had better make me a sandwich. A damn good sandwich.
Funny timing, a recent auction in chicago had some perfect pairings (or nearly did) for this little gizmo...apparently ~50k (US) can get you an imperial (8 bottles) of some of the fancy sauce:
The Things One Can Buy For $54,000 (Chicagoist)
and for $150k, hold your breath and you can get at this one:
Hold that toast: $150,000 wine pulled from auction (CNN Money)
Oh, I will deride a $50,000 sculpture all right. Especially if it's in a private home. But put a bottle opener on the back of it, and I say value added.