Incredibly Stupid Stuff Worth Way Too Much Money

Diamond-Encrusted iPhone

Stuart Hughes is a “luxury designer” who does one thing. He makes incredibly expensive versions of home electronics. His take on the iPhone 4S will run you a cool $9,400,000. Hey, with Apple winning their lawsuit against Samsung, they could buy more than 100 of these babies. He calls it the Apple 4S Elite Gold, and it’s handmade from rose gold with 500 individual flawless diamonds with a carat count of over 100. The casing is solid platinum inlaid with actual fossils from a tyrannosaurus rex. The main navigation button has been replaced with a huge 7.4-carat single-cut diamond. Sure, the inside is just like every other iPhone on the market, but it’s looks that count, right?

Haute Joallerie Watch

Watches are typically a way for the super-rich to show off their bankroll, but this Chopard bauble takes it to a whole new level of ridiculousness. Made in early 2000, it’s encrusted with 201 carats of blue, pink and white diamonds on the face alone. A spring-loaded mechanism moves the three huge diamond hearts out of the way to show the face, which is gold. The bracelet boasts another 163 carats of diamonds as well. Only one of these suckers was made, and somebody bought it for $25 million. Whether they actually wore it anywhere is another story.

Clearaudio Statement Turntable

Audiophiles are hilariously obsessive about their stereo equipment, claiming to be able to detect subtle differences in the sound of their Foghat records depending on how worn the phonograph needle is. The ultimate in high-priced hipster audio has to be the Clearaudio Statement Turntable, which will run you about $170,000. Why so much? Well, this turntable, made from stylish clear acrylic, is driven by a magnetic motor. That means that the record and the player’s surface never come in contact with each other. It’s kept from wobbling by a super-dense, 176-pound counterweight, and the needle is top of the line. Now, if only you had some records that didn’t belong to your dad.

MWE Emperor 200 Computer Workstation

If you really want to show the world that you’re a computer geek without compare, you need to drop some serious coin on a MWE Emperor 200. Screw desktop computers; this sucker looks like a scorpion, with a three-panel widescreen monitor setup and THX surround sound hung above an electric-powered leather seat that conforms to your body and offers an air filtering system to waft away all of your Cheeto odors. At a base price of $49,150, it’s a little bit more expensive than the Dell you’re using to read this.

Superlative Luxury T-Shirt

Clothes make the man, they say, so what kind of man needs to wear a $400,000 T-shirt? A rich idiot, that’s what kind. Superlative Luxury is a clothing company that invested serious resources into the production of the most expensive T-shirt in the world. Made from organic cotton that was processed using only renewable energy sources at a weight of 150 grams per square meter, woven to unbelievable softness. The printed design is accented with eight white diamonds and eight rare black diamonds, set by hand. Each of the stones measures over a carat as well. Wouldn’t those chafe? We may never know.

AeroDream One iPod Station

Pretty much every house in America has an iPod dock right now. Why wouldn’t you want to listen to your tunes through a good set of speakers? But if you’re a rich, ridiculous person with plenty of cash to spare, you need something a little bigger. Enter the Jarre Technologies AeroDream One. What sets this iPod dock apart from its competitors? Well, for one, it’s 11 feet tall. You need to climb up a special ladder to put your iPod in it. The AeroDream One is certainly loud, though, capable of pumping out 10,000 watts of audio, it’s suitable for concert-hall use. And it costs $565,000. Because all that inconvenience doesn’t come cheap.

Miniature Lamborghini Aventador

Paying $4.7 million for a car is ridiculous enough, but paying $4.7 million for a 1:8 scale model car? That’s just stupid. German modelmaker Robert Gulpan is widely considered to be the master of miniature cars, and his take on the Lamborghini Aventador is the most expensive thing he’s ever produced. The body and chassis are made from pure carbon fibre, lined with a microscopic thread of solid gold. The seats, wheels and headlights all have diamonds inlaid in them. And the whole thing is milled and assembled by hand. Just for reference, a full-sized Aventador will cost you less than 1/10th as much. They start at $379,000.

Antilla Home

Houses have long been a way for the world’s super-rich to piss away cash, but the luxury domicile of Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani is something else entirely. The 27-story structure would be ostentatious anywhere, but Ambani’s decision to construct it towering over the slums of Mumbai is so insulting and depressing that it’s almost funny. At a total cost of around $2 billion, the house (which is for Ambani and his family of six and requires 600 staff members to maintain) is by far the most expensive home in the world. It features three helipads, a swimming pool, an “ice room” to fight the Mumbai heat, and more. Ambani doesn’t seem to care about how he looks to his neighbors, which is kind of what happens when you’re rich.