A long-held lesson of economics is that the value of an item is what someone is willing to pay for it. Still, when it comes to auctions, that concept only partially explains the astronomical prices ...

Wouldn’t it be nice to have so much money that you could buy anything you wanted without checking your bank balance first? Maybe you’d buy a series of inconspicuous private jets, 10-carat diamonds, ...

When we envision extraordinarily expensive objects, the first items that come to mind are usually paintings by some medieval maestro, a billionaire's superyacht, or a one-of-a-kind car. But the ...