Free travel for life, thanks to 170 million painting purchase
The news is not new, in fact it has entered the history books by now, but I like to tell it because it is the example [...]
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The news is not new; in fact, it has entered the history books by now, But I like to tell the story because it is the most striking example of how the strategy of reward travel Is suitable for everyone, no matter what the spending capacity.
Modigliani's reclining nude, painted by the Italian painter in the early 1900s, was sold in 2015 at a Christie's auction for $170 million to Chinese billionaire Liu Yinqian.
The special feature is that the payment method used by Liu was not a transfer or a check, but simply swiped his American Express credit card to close the deal.
As is well known, credit cards issued by Amex do not have a predefined limit or overdraft. The spending limit per single transaction or per monthly transaction depends on the cardholder's history with his or her credit card.
The point is that by choosing the Amex card as the means of payment, Mr. Liu, who certainly has no problem buying airline tickets and booking a hotel room, secured a minimum of 170 million MR points, assuming he did not pay with a Card that grants more points per dollar spent.
When asked why Liu chose to pay with American Express. He and his wife they candidly admitted that this way they could use the points to give themselves free vacations for the rest of their lives.
Just think that with less than 100 thousand points I managed to get a first class ticket to fly in Singapore Airlines' suite from New York to Frankfurt. Translated into points we are therefore potentially talking about almost 200 free tickets, tickets that would otherwise cost as much as 8000€ each.
Another way to use the points could be to book over 300 nights in the world's most luxurious hotels.
American Express at the time of the transaction made no official statement, much less admitted whether the one just made by Mr. Liu was the largest in Amex history. What is certain is that just a few months earlier, also at an auction, the Asian collector had bought a set of The, for 30 million euros, again of course with electronic payment.
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