Had free reign throughout the facility for two days, scavenging through 200k sqft+ of warehouse, marveling at the cringey pseudo-motivational blather posted everywhere and grabbing whatever could fit into my apartment at the time. At one point, we spotted Holmes (and her "special needs" Siberian Husky puppy who left dribbles of urine on the warehouse floor) arguing with some operators from afar.
We weren't allowed to touch specific computers, chemicals or any hardware locked in the cages (incl Edison devices), but everything else was up for grabs, from high-end Mitutoyo measuring tools to Aeron chairs to U-Line desks, Theranos bumper stickers, water bottles, etc etc etc.
So yeah, I've got a few bits of Theranos branded gear... Still waiting on the right time to sell.
I like hubris branding for the same (mythical) reason Canadian engineers do iron rings [0]: so that maybe when I'm waivering on an important decision, I'll look down at the logo on my coffee cup and remember that some things are more important than immediate professional gratification.
That's a really cool collection! I always find it interesting to learn what obscure things folks collect.
> any authentic Theranos gear
How do you tell if it's authentic? If I was a collector in this area, my big concern would be that especially given that the market is hot, someone could just look on ebay for images of branded products, and then make replicas of them by passing the same logo onto promotional printers.
A buddy of mine has a similar fascination with picking things up from defunct companies, specializing in film/video post production companies. One of the items he picked up was a standard banker's box. Inside were a pile of CD-Rs which turned out to be the entire digital back up of an unfinished 3D animated feature. The entire recordings of the actor's lines. The 3D objects, scenes, etc to an unknown level of completeness. Even though the work product was purchased from the bankruptcy auction, the copyright was still owned by the creators and could not be rendered/released just because they bought a box in auction for $20.
Does the first-sale doctrine not apply here?
And rip offs will often have subpar artwork obviously not using original AI/EPS files.
That sounds hilarious, can you post a picture?
The Lehman Brothers risk management/principles cube was a hot seller for a while, but I'm curious as to long term valuations. Thought the art collection didn't actually do that well on resale.
[*from What We Do In The Shadows]
I think that's part of the fun, hunting for the original stuff.
Worth anything?
Very very very curious of the text contained within.
Would you be interested in an unreleased "Cosby Show" lego set that was supposed to come out right before he got cancelled?
Can't tell if serious. If serious, was this out of Lego Ideas (Cuusoo)? [I worked on the Back to the Future DeLorean set with the designers in Denmark]
0: https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/07/us/bill-cosby-quaaludes-sexua...
The discussion about disgraced-public-figure memorabilia was certainly offtopic, but it was offtopic in a whimsical and unpredictable way. That's ok on HN because it's interesting. What's not interesting, and is the bad kind of offtopicness, is turning the thread into a generic argument about some inflammatory thing that has already had countless flamewars. If you review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, you'll see that we have several rules that are intended to act as flame retardant against this kind of thing:
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
The high-indignation, high-repetition flamewar topics are like black holes that suck in threads that swerve too close to them. Since they're so repetitive (and generally so nasty), they're definitely not what HN is for, so we should all try to steer clear of them.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
But I actually meant "literally" cancelled. The Lego set was planned to come out with an actual REBOOT of the Cosby Show, which was cancelled in the traditional meaning of the word, like the TV did not go to air.
https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/nbc-kills-new-bill-cosby-....
If that was the intent, it was a pretty big mistake to use “before he got cancelled” instead of “before the show got cancelled”. The former construct in modern usage is pretty exclusively used for pejorative references to actions attributed to “cancel culture”.
That was the meaning before “cancel culture” and was the intent of the parent.
I didn’t at all read it the way you did, maybe I’m older than you and I’ve seen more shows cancelled. (Firefly, for a famous enough example)
I would not be interested in authentic Theranos swag, but I would pay a lot for a new knockoff mock turtleneck with the old MPlayer logo on it. Now I can't even find the old MPlayer logo anymore.
I worked for a "hot" a16z startup just out of college, with a trendy office and the :rocket: :moon: vibe. They went under a few years after I bailed, but I still wear the t-shirt because it makes me chuckle.
In a strange twist of fate, I decided to exercise my few options, and I had to mail my stock exercise notice to some place with a check for ~$2500 to purchase them. USPS lost the letter and saved me $2500.
Hey OP, I got a Theranos-branded mug I can drop-ship you from Alibaba. $800 OBO
I’d think the only way is to be the original owner (ie proof of employment at the company), but even then, given such a hot marketplace it would be super easy to just purchase and resell knockoffs.
The same way they do it with art ... research.
With say a sweatshirt produced by a third party based on some digital stencil art, do you know for sure the one you're receiving was printed by the company and given to an employee/customer? Literally hundreds, possibly thousands would be in circulation. How would you be able to distinguish that from say something a former employee w/ access to the original art data having it reprinted?
But it sure does make me nostalgic!
https://www.ebay.com/b/CueCat-POS-Barcode-Scanners/46706/bn_...
Even some cases of 100 for $500.
I was curious. My ebay search for "theranos" turned up 50 items. There were fleece jackets with high asking prices, so that certainly was something. But everything else I saw for mugs and hats and t-shirts was in the $20-50 range.
In my totally arbitrary set of rules the item must have been available or given to employees only.
Here’s one I’d love to get my hands on if not for the price: https://www.ebay.com/itm/255014966170?hash=item3b6013939a:g:...
Seems like plenty of new things not collectors items.
I have a friend who is cousins with Elizabeth Holmes. His mom was her first investor and she has the original stock certificates... They're planning on turning them into NFT's and selling them.
(Hmm... might as well fabricate the collectibles themselves, as some other commenters have suggested...)
For the longest time the historical Vancouver stock exchange, vsx, was known as something like the fraud capital of North America.
All of that is before we even get into the ugly history of some Canadian mining companies that have got into bed with non-democratic regimes in places in the developing world, where they did actually have a real mineral resource to extract, and damn the consequences.
" ...one of the five women who considered themselves his wife... "
This is some serious drama. Have you got any reading you can recommend on the topic? I recently bought "The Prize" to catch up on my oil & gas history, perhaps there is a sibling book for minerals?
It would be trivial to prove you worked at a company if that's how you were given it, you might even have photos of an event where stuff was given out, emails detailing a "welcome pack", I'm guessing it's these sort of things that are used as proof.
https://www.apmex.com/product/50847/enron-corp-stock-certifi...
Also I love that website. As a recent casual collector of paper currency. I never thought to buy some old stocks/bonds.
Edit: it’d be hilarious I’d the Enron stock was fake
I've seen a lot of Pawn Stars in the past six months. They never say this, but you can put it together. Most things that people collect trade in low volumes, so pricing is hard, and the bid/ask spread kills you. If you decide to sell, you'll either get 70% of the value if you sell it fast, or maybe 100% if you're ready to wait two years. If you want to liquidate everything, it might depress the market. There's also a discount when you have it as a collection because someone could part it out, but that's even more time. That, and the drive to collect is building the collection, so there's less utility in getting an instant collection.
As a collector of memorabilia for a band that's been around a while: The items I was drawn to, either because I just loved the look or because they were from a show/tour/album I particularly found special, have often turned out to be the ones that have appreciated much more in value than the average thing of that level of rarity for the band.
Also, have you seen The Booksellers?
It took me a while to realize I was collecting books. Before, the way I thought of it was "I would never walk past an out-of-print book about computing history! I might never come across it again!" But now I am a bit more focused on the collection aspect, for example, there are now specific titles and authors that I seek out.
Like you, I collect fucked/defunct company merch, tho my collection isn’t just fraud related, I’ve got Quibi merch — most of it is. I’ve got MoviePass, Fyre Festival legit merch with tags, Ozy Media was a recent one, Enron business cards, Arthur Andersen tote bags, Worldcom mugs, etc. I’ve even got some old Internet Explorer merch, because it’s kitsch!
What is your favorite piece?
At first I read 'worth in the hundreds of thousands' and I was really curious what garnered such value. Language ambiguity is fun.
Wish I had gone big on this one earlier, because I have a feeling this verdict is going to spice things up in the short term.
All that to be said, if you've got any authentic Theranos gear hiding in storage please do let me know, I'm a motivated buyer.
For those curious as one example: Nothing raises a few eyebrows more than a note written on Lehman Brothers letterhead with a Purdue Pharma OxyContin pen with the dosage pullout.