Paul's Comments

My favorite stock is Berkshire Hathaway Common, (BRK-A), and I happen to be a big fan because it's the most expensive stock in the world. They never do stock splits so the price remains the same, roughly. It reminds me of the corporation that runs the planet Venus in Robert A. Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars in which you're only one of three classes of people: a visiting tourist, an employee of the company, or a stockholder. You have to be fairly wealthy to have enough money to buy at least one share to become a stockholder but once you are, basically you're set for life.

No, I don't own any stock in Berkshire although I wish I could. I've made jokes how "I could have bought Berkshire Hathaway at 8 (thousand)" but that's not true, I probably didn't notice BH until maybe 1995 and by then it was between $20 and $27 thousand a share.

The current price for Berkshire Hathaway is about $117,000 a share.
I couldn't raise that much money if I sold a kidney, lung and anything else of which I have spare parts (presuming I could sell body parts; Federal law doesn't allow it.) That means that if you're wealthy, sick, need a part and can't get on the waiting list or have a wait expected to exceed your estimated life expectency, you go to India where you can buy a spare part, and cheaply too. (Presuming you have your own private checking done to make sure the donor doesn't have AIDS.)

Originally I wrote that it's interesting that is very close to the price to obtain a taxi medallion in New York City. That's before I looked it up. In May of 2008, the City of New York sold 86 medallions in a group of 46 2-medallion blocks for a minimum price of $700,000 each and one medallion for an independent for $189 large.

That tongue-swallowing nosebleed price for Berkshire is the reason I'm such a fan of it. Plus I've been a customer of theirs from time to time; BH is the holding company for GEICO insurance (among a whole bunch of other companies).

You know, it's pointless for me to just post things here without checking them; a two-minute search on the internet can give me almost any fact I need to find out. I first said that I'm not sure if Berkshire bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad or if it was the chairman of the company - who I could not remember his name - on his own. Again, two minutes told me that Warren Buffett didn't buy BNSF for his own account, it is a (wholly owned) subsidiary of Berkshire.