Would You Pay $500,000 to Have Coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook?

Today, I happened to be scanning through my news feed, which is really just a bunch of headlines in the format of 140 characters or less. I live in Texas, so most of my friends are posting farewell’s and RIP’s to the great country music legend George Jones. In between some of these farewell updates, I noticed a story about an auction that had reached $500,000.

CharityBuzz.com Auction for Coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook

As it turns out, there is a CharityBuzz.com auction to have coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook. After 81 bids, the current bid is $580,000. As a fan of Apple products and as a person who knows a ton of Mac fanboys, I’m not surprised that so many people want to have coffee with Tim Cook. However, in my opinion, the bidding has skyrocketed way past the point of typical Apple fandom. We are now at a level of absurdity.

The irony here is that this is exactly the kind of thing I believe people should spend their money on: making memories.

Each year, when 2-3 new Apple products are released, Apple fans line up to basically upgrade their current products, which – by the way – are most likely still working fine. But they just have to have the newest and coolest Apple gadget. As a marketer, I love how Apple has been able to essentially create fans/customers for life. But in my opinion, having the latest gadget doesn’t necessarily add anything extra to your life.

You know what type of thing has the potential to add something much more memorable to your life? Meeting someone like Tim Cook for coffee at Apple Headquarters. So while I think the current bid is utterly ridiculous, I am really glad that someone will get to do something really cool rather than buy something really cool.

BTW I wonder how much coffee you could buy with $580,000. Maybe you could start a new coffee company. Or maybe you could buy a successful, established local coffee shop.