Someone Paid Nearly $1 Million for This Old-Ass Life Vest

They say one million dollars can barely get you anything these days, which seems true, since someone just shelled out $904,500 for a century-old cork-stuffed life vest. 

Yes, it was a life vest worn by a survivor of the RMS Titanic. Still! That’s a lot of money for something that, notably, never had to do its job. 

The vest was worn by Laura Mabel Francatelli, a secretary traveling first class to Chicago with her boss, fashion designer Lucy Duff Gordon, and her boss’s husband. Famously, the ship did not have enough lifeboats for its 2,200 passengers (only about 700 people were saved), but these three snagged a seat on lifeboat No. 1—one of the more controversial boats since it left the ship only partially filled. She later signed the vest along with other survivors, which is how it ended up at auction as a “once in a generation” item.

But for one million,  you could probably spend a day with James Cameron, get Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to sign something way more interesting, and hire a medium strong enough to actually contact someone from 1912. But to each their own. 

If this is the going rate for shipwreck survivor memorabilia, then I’m about to have a very reckless summer. 

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