Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Early Addition
That's a lotta taxi medallions!
The Taxi and Limousine Commission yesterday had an auction for 54 new wheelchair-accessible taxi medallions and with a surprise bid 35-year-old Russian immigrant Gene Friedman snatched up all of them for $477,666.50 - a pop! "Individual medallions have privately sold for more, but this marks the highest price paid at auction" - nearly $25 million total! Friedman now owns nearly 700 medallions, not bad for a guy who bought his first one only ten years ago.
The sealed auction generated a large amount of interest, there was an average of 10 bids for each medallion, though it is expected to pale in comparison to the auction set to take place next week. That's when the city is going to auction another 254 medallions for alternative-fuel vehicles.
Now if only all the city's taxis could be alternative-fuel and wheelchair-accessible. That'd be something...
Detail of a photo by Swaneeswan via Contribute.
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
Huh. I did not, infact, know that taxi medallions were worth so much. Learn something new everyday I guess...
Yeah - the market price of a medallion is half a million dollars and then we wonder why you can't get a cab during rush hour, or why cabbies are trying to add on a $1.50 gas surcharge onto fares.
The reason the medallions are worth so much is there are relatively, so few.
You may never recoup the price of one just by driving a cab, but you can always sell it later for more than you payed.
There are even special loans, essentially mortgages, for Taxi Cab Medallions in New York City.
They are of course transferable from one vehicle to another.
Gene Friedman owns 700 NYC taxi medallions. As one of the largest owner, he has the most interest in keeping the market price high and raising it's current value. The problem is that he is allowed to control the market by doing so. New York City should limit the number of medallions that one individual can own. A mega owner that control the free market, is converting it to a monopoly that will never give a fair chance to anyone else but the monopolist.