Jerry Buss passed away at age 80 today (1933-2013). He had been the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers since 1979. Under his watch, the team won 10 championships and produced some pretty ridiculous teams: Magic, Kareem and Worthy, then Kobe and Shaq, and now just Kobe. He was inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame in 2010. Now I'm not a Lakers fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do respect what his teams accomplished. Anyways, the reason I'm posting this is that he was a pretty well-known coin collector. I always thought he was just some rich dude throwing his cash around at big name coins (the 1913 5c and 1804 $1). I found a cool article on him that proved my assumptions about him incorrect. It is republished from an interview with Buss by Numismatic News. I don't think I can paste the whole thing here, so I'll just link it. It's half way down the page. RIP Buss.
"....Buss saw his personal wealth increase to the $100,000,000+ level, and after 35 years was able to realize his dream of owning the 1913 Liberty nickel and 1804 dollar. While attending a basketball game in the spring of 1978 with Ira Goldberg of Superior Stamp and Coin Gallery, Goldberg mentioned he had a chance to buy a 1913 Liberty nickel, and asked if he would be interested. “I thought about it for maybe 20-30 seconds, and said ‘yes, I would.’” The coin was his for a reported $200,000, and later that year he acquired the Idler specimen 1804 silver dollar for a similar figure, also through private treaty from Superior. “One night after I bought the 1804 dollar,” Buss concluded, “I went back to my old, old collections and sat down with my original penny board, my Buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes – the three original boards. I’ve never replaced any of the coins in those boards. I took out my first copy of the Red Book – totally worn, I must have looked at it a million times. And I still had the old pamphlet of B. Max Mehl, with the picture of the 1856 Flying Eagle cent, the 1913 ‘V’ nickel and the 1804 dollar on the cover; and I took those three coins and sat the pamphlet right next to them. I sat back and said, ‘My boy, you ain’t doing too badly.’” Pretty cool. Very successful guy and coin collector.
Sometimes I wonder what I'd have if I were filthy rich... Obviously darn near everything I wanted, but would it still be/feel the same?
No matter how wealthy you could be, you'd will never be satisfied with the material items you currently own. And you could never have "everything you want" because someone else would always have something you wished you could own.
He was also an avid poker player and appeared on High Stakes Poker and I hear that the WSOP is going to name the Seven Stud Event after him. Seems a little strange to me though since he never actually won the event.
