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Thursday March 11th 2010, 3:20 pm
Filed under: eBay, Business Ideas

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Update: eBay has removed the link. The google cache of this auction is located here.

This kid, Ron Steen, just put himself up for auction. I mean that literally: 2% of his future income will go to the highest bidder. The minimum bid price is $100,000. Whether or not this is legal in the first place, it is nonetheless a terrible investment, for several reasons.

First of all, note that I do not think that buying stock in a person is a bad idea. My brother pitched me this idea years ago, and just today I was thinking that this would be an interesting enterprise—getting hundreds of students to pitch 1% of their future earnings in return for $25,000, and then selling shares of that return to interested investors. I think that would be a cool business, I might even sell my income in that case.

However, this investment is terrible. First of all, we need to take a look at the proposition he gives. If you win the auction, you begin to make money after he graduates from college, in 2012 only until 2052. Take a look at this chart made by FatAlbert from reddit.com.

Year	Salary	To You	Total Invested at 8% With Auction	Total invested at 8% Without Auction
2006	0	0	0	100000
2007	0	0	0	108000
2012	250000	5000	5000	158687
2015	293560	5871	24333	199900
2020	383672	7673	75982	293719
2025	501443	10029	164220	431570
2030	655367	13107	310011	634118
2035	856538	17131	545318	931727
2040	1119461	22389	918630	1369013
2045	1463090	29262	1503178	2011530
2050	1912201	38244	2409162	2955597
2051	2017372	40347	2642243	3192045
2052	2128327	42567	$2,896,188.49	$3,447,408.53

If you invest your money now at an average 8% interest (optimistically, you can even make more than that), and you invest every check he gives you, at the end of the day you have lost $600,000. And that is assuming that by 2052, he is making $2,128,327 a year. Do you know anyone graduating straight out of Cal State Fullerton making $250k?
So even if he hits his goal of making $30 million dollars, you have still lost a hell of a lot of money. In the even more likely case, he won’t even approach that $30 million number, and you have just lost way more.
But let’s assume you think he would be able to make this amount of money, because he seems like a standup, trustworthy guy. Right? Wrong. Look at some of the answers to his questions on the auction.

Q: Have you thought about offering something more like 15 or 20%? The current promise of 2% doesn’t make you sound like a very impressive investment. … You might be have better luck just begging somebody for money with no strings attached. –Lizzy
A: : Lizzy, Your ending comment was very rood and insensitive. I am going to make tons of money and if you believe me you can ride the wave, if not than I guess it is your loss. I didn’t think to hard about your idea, since I have more questions than I could possibly answer. If I were even considering selling a whopping 15 % of myself, I would go for millions, because I am worth it….

Really, the comment was rood? What about this one.

Q: You do realize that with a competent money manager, a wealthy person can just let the $100,000 dollars sit and, at modest 7% returns a year, make six times in less than 20 years?
A: Yes, this would be an optimal investment for wealthy people, but investing in companies like Phillip Morris and Altria Co. can gain you 7% but its products are harmful; for example ciggarettes. Also, their is not one can do to increase the value of shares of stock. In my investment, you gain forty checks for the lifetime of the contract and also have an enjoyable time in the process. Thank you for your intrest.

That’s right, they do make harmful products, like ciggarettes. If only investors had an option to invest in whatever company they wanted to, such as companies that don’t make harmful products. Also, he can’t spell intrest, and there are some grammar mistakes too.

At least he has a pretty solid background in education, right? Again, wrong.

He may have a 3.5 GPA. (Not uncommon at all). He might be going to a university (Cal State Fullerton). But he has an impressive 1550 SAT score right? That’s damn high…hell that is higher than 95% of the people at Stanford!

Wait wait, that’s right they changed the test. It’s out of 2400 now. 1550/2400 isn’t so impressive. You know what else isn’t impressive? That the score is a lie. Read that again.

Ron Steen did not get a 1550.

I emailed Ron and asked him for his breakdown in Math/Verbal scores. Here is the response I got.

“900/650 Thank you-Ron”

Read that again, and see if you can catch the error. Oh yeah! SAT SCORES ONLY GO UP TO 800. Ron is literally lying about his SAT scores, and he didn’t even lie well!

Don’t trust this guy. He isn’t even telling the truth about his scores.

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