I'm Number 1  

The flow of oil money into the Gulf states is having the usual blowout effect on strange collectibles - one UAE resident recently paying almost 10 million euros for a number plate marked "1". The buyer admitted later he would have been willing to pay up to US$27 million. During the great Japanese bubble, when gold flecked drinks and oxygen bars were all the go for people with money to burn, I had a friend who used to fantasise about hiring an icebreaker and collecting Antarctic ice to sell as "pure water" iceblocks to a price-unconscious market. Maybe its time to dust this idea off again...

The value of "vanity license plates" climbed to new heights Saturday when a car license plate with nothing but No. "1" on it went for a record US$14 million (€9.5 million) at a charity auction in the Emirati capital.

"I bought it because it's the best number," said Saeed Khouri, a member of a prominent Abu Dhabi family that made its fortune in real estate. "I bought it because I want to be the best in the world." Khouri refused to reveal how many cars he owned and which one of them will carry the record-breaking single digit plate.

Vanity license plates, as they are popularly called, are a series of unique car license plates which the state auctioneers in this oil-rich Gulf state began auctioning off since last May. But unlike ordinary car plates issued to drivers here and most other vanity series plates which carry both Arabic and Western numerals and script, defining the issuing city and country, Khouri's plate had only the Western numeral and no letters.