According to Bloomberg a Chinese man recently earned a total of 422 million American Express points after he purchased a HK$281 million (US$36 million) porcelain cup in a Sotherby’s auction. Unfortunately these are Hong Kong AmEx points which are much less valuable than their American counterparts, when converting them to frequent flyer miles you need 15 points per mile so he would’ve ended up with 28 million frequent flyer miles.
Photo courtesy of Bloomberg
He might’ve been better off using a different credit card, but the main issue he was facing is that you can only move $50,000 per year out of the country due to currency controls. Even though the transaction was broken up into multiple payments it was likely that he would have also needed a charge card as most credit cards will not have a limit that is anywhere near high enough.
Looking at that amount of points really puts my manufactured spending and sign up bonus points into perspective. On the flip side I’m also not spending $36 million on a cup.
