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.
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.
View Comments (8)
I'm more impressed with the fact that his financials would have to be so stellar for Amex to approve a 36mil charge (s). I wouldn't think someone spending 36mil on a cup really cares about his miles.
There most certainly is NOT a $50k annual limit on currency movements in Hong Kong. There are currency controls in China that apply exclusively to Mainland banks. This is not a factor in cross-border credit card purchases.
Since HK Monetary Authority prohibits credit card issuance to non-Hong Kong ID card holders, Mainland Chinese do not have access to HK AmEx Cards.
That's what the article says.
Careful--Sotheby's is really cracking down on manufactured spending. I was only able to cycle through about $10 million before they shut me down.
Oh my!!!! are you serious Nick? what did you spend $10 million on? and wow.....what kind of job do you do to be able to earn that amount of money....
Not even slightly serious. :-)
I don't understand how he can pay $36 million for the cup that he won at the auction with an Amex credit card? Just what kind of Amex credit card that has a credit limit of $36 million?
If it's an Amex charge card, what kind of charge card is it?
Centurion, if you read the bloomberg piece the purchase had to be split over multiple payments as the terminal couldn't handle a payment as large as that. AmEx would've done nicely out of the whole thing charging a ~2.5% fee.