One cannot help but observe, with a certain weary amusement, the singular whims of our contemporary gentlemen. It appears that the latest fashion among the opulent—having exhausted the charms of rare stamps and gilded snuff-boxes—is the acquisition of skeletal remains from an era before the invention of the corset or the tea-service.

Mr. Denis Shevyakov, a gentleman of the Paleo Hunters museum, has seen fit to divulge the financial requirements for such a pastime. He informs us that should a person of means wish to adorn their drawing-room with a dinosaur, they must be prepared to part with no less than three and a half million dollars. Of course, for such a sum, one receives a 'small, meter-long herbivore'—a creature which, in its lifetime, likely possessed more dignity than the bourgeois speculators who now trade in its ribs.

It is a most diverting spectacle to behold how the market operates. The truly rare specimens are kept in shadows, held back from the common gaze until an auction house can stir a frenzy of competition. Consider the case of 'Stan' the Tyrannosaurus, who fetched a staggering 31.8 million dollars at Christie's in 2020, far exceeding the modest estimate of fifteen million. Such events have awakened a slumbering greed in the hearts of many, leading to the subsequent sale of 'Alex' the Stegosaurus for a sum of 44.6 million dollars at Sotheby's.

When one inquires as to the 'investment value' of such dust and stone, the answer is as fickle as a lady's mood during a social visit. One may gain a mere twenty percent, or, should one possess a relic of absolute uniqueness, five times the original expenditure. It is, in essence, a game of chance: one simply requires another gentleman, possessed of an equal amount of leisure and an excess of capital, who decides that he simply must own what no other man possesses.

Indeed, the festivities continue. On the 14th of July, Sotheby's shall present a Tyrannosaurus known as 'Gus'—a skeleton of some sixty-seven million years. The estimated price is twenty to thirty million dollars. One wonders if the dinosaur, in its ancient wisdom, finds it amusing that its only remaining purpose is to serve as a monument to the vanity of the wealthy.