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As one might expect, these tapes eventually began to take up space — a lot of it. By investing in Apple stock, Stokes saved enough money to buy as many as nine
by fbdab103 2y ago
As one might expect, these tapes eventually began to take up space — a lot of it. By investing in Apple stock, Stokes saved enough money to buy as many as nine additional apartments, which she used as storage units to hold all of her tapes.
Why apartments vs storage units? More secure/humidity/pest controlled?
Also, starting in 1979, I assume the raw price of the tapes was exorbitant.
- newzisforsukas 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30611323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30611323
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoLiterally became rich from stock, like investing in NVIDIA today
- irrational 2y agoOr, if you started investing in NVIDIA years ago. They just had a 10-1 stock split.
- jonhohle 2y agoIt’s not as if you get n shares priced at $x if you owned one share prices at $x. When a stock splits you get n shares each worth $x/n. The purpose is to lower the trading price for an individual share.
- ghaff 2y agoIt's more like a recognition that the sales price probably has gone up a lot and that management likely has some level of confidence that it will continue to increase--though that is of course not a guarantee that NVIDIA is a good investment today.
- insane_dreamer 2y agostock splits don't change the value of your holdings
- water-your-self 2y agoIve convinced myself now that this woman was a time traveler and you cannot sway me.
- matthewfelgate 2y agoI came here to say this.
- ralferoo 2y agoI came here 45 years ago to say this, but for some reason my comment is only just showing up now.
- smrtinsert 2y agoarchiving for the future... perfect bet on a single stock... hmmm
- ghaff 2y agoThat detail is actually a little odd. Without making a research project out of it--and possibly not taking into account various splits properly--it looks like it was into the 2000s before AAPL shares really took off. There were way better investments during dot-com--assuming you dumped them in time of course.
- qq66 2y agoApartments are more useful assets to own than storage units.
- pimlottc 2y agoAnd commensurately more expensive
- monktastic1 2y agoNot sure where you're from, but in most of the US "apartments" are not assets, but liabilities: tenants don't own them, but rent them. We generally call them "condos" when owned.
- skissane 2y ago> Not sure where you're from, but in most of the US "apartments" are not assets, but liabilities: tenants don't own them, but rent them. A rented apartment is a liability to the tenant, but an asset to the landlord. And whether a residence is rented or owner-occupied isn't an inherent property of the residence, since it can change over time–it isn't uncommon (for a person of sufficient means) to buy a new house/apartment/etc and then rent out the old one instead of selling it. > We generally call them "condos" when owned. Is this a peculiarity of American English? In Australian English, "apartment" is about the type of physical structure, and has nothing to do with the building's legal structure. (What Americans call "condominiums", Australians call "strata title", but it is essentially the same thing–newer apartment buildings are almost all strata title, but older buildings sometimes have other ownership structures, for example company title.)
- aurareturn 2y agoI don't know what is more incredible, the fact that she is doing this or the fact that she's funding this project with AAPL.
- washadjeffmad 2y agoWhen I lived in a 1930s apartment building, there were door frames throughout the floor. I could have expanded my 2b2ba to the entire floor by putting doors on either side of the central elevators. If she lived in a similar building, all she'd have had to do was move her door to the end of the hall, and all of the apartments around her would have become additional rooms.
- account42 2y agoThis doesn't really address the question of why she used expensive residential locations for storage instead of cheaper alternatives.
- washadjeffmad 2y agoI think if she'd been motivated by short term price efficiency, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Given she chose to buy nine apartments, we can at least assume she found the arrangement convenient and affordable, and that she valued fixed expenses. Extending from that, so she could house the televisions, easily access and change the tapes, and not have to transport them to wherever might be cheaper but further for storage, she would have chosen apartments physically near her. My explanation was how someone could "buy apartments" to expand their floor plan, which is what I thought it likely she did, since people may not be familiar with how that might work.
- Projectiboga 2y agoPhiladelphia real estate was very affordable at the time. Storage wasn't commonplace like it is now and would have involved moving things to a warehouse district, while there are some near where she lived that might have been less easy than just acquiring cheep coop apartments.
- airstrike 2y agoPurchasing real state assets that appreciate in value significantly over time is better than paying for rent expense every month if you don't indent those tapes to go anywhere else Rent only really makes sense if you can't afford to buy, generally
- neither_color 2y agoArchiving television programs was not Stokes’ only fascination. In fact, the tech-savvy hoarder also took an early interest in Apple computers — and amassed 192 Macintosh computers before she died. I'd really like to know more about why she collected 192 Macs. What did she think/know?