Empty beer cans. We’ve been crushing them against our foreheads and recycling them like fools. Because it turns out, if you just keep them (in some kind of well-appointed beer can closet), you can become a millionaire. Yes.
Slight catch: it may take about 40 years. And 87,000 cans of vintage beer. While we can’t quite testify to the rationale of buying cans of beer in the 80 thousands and NOT drinking them, we’re clearly not nearly as smart as Jeff Lebo, who’s been compiling a collection (and, we hope, drinking some?) in his vacation home in York Haven, Pennsylvania.
At this point, the total net worth is around $1.6 million, which could either get you 20 minutes in Tribeca or 4,000 years anywhere else. The York Haven beer shrine is actually now an inn, a bit of a destination where people can come, look at kitschy 70’s era beer cans, not drink them, but bask in the kitsch (and hopefully get a beer elsewhere).
As with dusty hunters (a term for dudes—generally—who go to liquor stores and convince them the high-value bottle of hooch on the back shelf isn’t worth much, and then buy them, and laugh and laugh), Lebo doesn’t necessarily intend to sell his collection. As a true beer loving genius, he’s keeping most, but sold enough to buy some property in Costa Rica. Ever the business man, the Costa Rican property will be an “eco-resort” for vacationers. No word on what kind of vintage booze will be stored there.
