This past week, an anonymous fan bid a record $4,567,888 in a charity auction to have lunch with Warren Buffett, topping the previous record of $3,456,789.
The annual auction for lunch with the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman has raised almost $30 million for San Francisco charity Glide, a favorite cause of Mr. Buffett’s first wife, Susie Buffett. Glide offers free meals, health care, and other services to homeless and low-income people in San Francisco.
The $4.6 million entitles the winner to invite up to seven guests to have dinner with Buffett at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York.
While I’m sure it would be great to chat with Buffett for a few hours, I can think of several ways to spend $4.6 million that would seem to be more enjoyable.
For example, how awesome would it be to have Bruce Springsteen give a concert in your backyard?
Well a few years ago, Priceonomics partnered with Degy Entertainment to come up with a list of how much it would cost to hire your favorite band.
According to the list, eight Degy acts command more than $1 million per show: Taylor Swift, Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, James Taylor, Dave Matthews, Bruce Springsteen, and Bon Jovi. Priceonomics admits that the data is not perfect, and estimates that Lady Gaga almost certainly commands over $1 million per show, as opposed to the $750k figure reported here.
Looking at a more detailed list of the data, here are the bands I’d be interested in hiring, and their cost:
Bruce Springsteen – $1 million
James Taylor – $1 million
Josh Groban – $500K
The Killers – $500K
The Avett Brothers – $250K
Willie Nelson – $200K
CCR – $60K (although only a few original members remain)
Kenny Rogers – $80K
Norah Jones – $75K
Anna Kendrick – $50K
Ingrid Michaelson – $50K
Total – $3,765,000
That leaves me with almost $1 million more to spend, and there are certainly some acts not listed that I’d love to have in my backyard – the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Jimmy Buffett, Billy Joel, and Carole King, to name a few.
So I found another web site that also put together a similar list, and I found Jimmy Buffett is another $1 million act.
So that brings my total to $4.7 million.
That would give me one act per month for a full year, and I’m sure I could bring as many people as I wanted.
That sounds a lot more enjoyable than one two-hour lunch with Warren Buffett.
And as far as Anna Kendrick being on the list, maybe she could teach me the cup song, and give me a shout out on Twitter. Those two things alone seem well worth $50,000…
*photo from Yahoo Finance
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