bet there is some supply here
Princely prices in world's biggest garage sale
By Cahal Milmo
03 August 2001
For Sale: Trove of 10,000 items ranging from priceless jewels to unused fire engines and hardwood toilet seats. Current owner forced to sell due to family dispute over £500,000-a-day spending habit.
A huge stock of luxury fixtures and fittings built up by playboy par excellence Prince Jefri Bulkiah of Brunei is to be auctioned next week after being catalogued by a firm of British valuers. They are the assets of the prince's company Amedeo Development, which collapsed three years ago with debts of £4bn.
The world's most exclusive garage sale, worth an estimated £2bn, was forced by a falling out between Prince Jefri and his brother, the Sultan of Brunei, until recently the richest man in the world.
An international lawsuit was launched last year by the Sultan against his brother for allegedly embezzling up to £2bn from the oil-rich state's coffers and squandering around £28bn.
The Brunei Investment Agency, which administers the Sultan's assets, has seen its reserves fall from as much as £65bn in recent years to a value of around £25bn. But an embarrassing showdown was averted by an out-of-court settlement under which Prince Jefri agreed to give back most of his assets, including the vast stash built up by Amedeo Development.
Housed in 21 separate warehouses across Brunei, the trove consists of furnishings and baubles destined for a chain of luxury hotels and royal palaces.
It includes flight and race car simulators, including one for a Comanche helicopter, a couple of recording studios and 100 Italian chandeliers worth £35,000 each.
A spokesman for Smith Hodgkinson, the London-based auctioneers called in to value the haul, said: "It has taken six weeks of constant work just to finalise a list of what is in the warehouses.
The auction catalogue lists lots from the tasteless, 400 black and gold Victoriana lamp-posts, to the excessive, 200 refrigerators and 16,000 tonnes of Italian marble and granite. As well as two Mercedes Benz fire tenders (mint condition), there are several hundred Louis XIV-style gilt chairs, cabinets and mirrors, and a fleet of forklift trucks.
The auction takes place in Brunei over six days from August 11. Prince Jefri, who is estimated to have spent £500,000 a day for the last ten years, famously named one of his yachts Tits with two tenders, Nipple I and Nipple II.
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