"Big John" Sold For Almost $8 Million At Paris Auction -- December 13, 2021

Gene Munster: raises AAPL target to $250.

• says Apple, Inc., reinvents itself every five years;
• now, "we're here again"
• metaverse
• Munster is apprehensive about metaverse, but "it's the future"
• doesn't see "payoff" for several years
  
• consider Coinbase is the bank of the metaverse
• and Facebook 
  
• auto and autonomous
• AAPL trading at $181.10, up almost one percent; up $1.72
• needs to get to 182.86 to hit $3-trillion market cap
• metaverse is nothing more than the "next generation of the internet"
  
• metaverse basket: AAPL, Coinbase, Facebook
  

Global warming: link here -- 

• tornadoes in the news
• from 2000-2020 the US experienced four F/EF5 tornadoes 
• from 1954-1974 the US experienced 36 (!) F/EF5 tornadoes
• elsewhere:
• let's see: Florida -- hurricanes
• Oklahoma to Nebraska, South Dakota to Missouri: tornado alley
• California: earthquakes, wildfires, far left
• New York: winter; Cuomo, DeBlasio
• Texas, Austin to Dallas, along the I-35 corridor: traffic

Belle Fourche, SD: an unnamed private buyer purchased "Big John," a 67-million-year-old Triceratops skeleton that was uncovered in South Daota's Perkins County in 2014, for $7.7 million at a Paris auction on October 21, 2021. Multiple links. Here at National Geographic. With a lot of hand-wringing. 

The founder of a South Dakotan firm called PaleoAdventures, which digs up fossils for commercial sale, Stein nicknamed the fossil “Big John” after the owner of the ranch where he found it. 

For six years, he held on to the Triceratops in hopes that a U.S. museum would purchase it—but none came forward. Then, in 2020, he sold the fossil to an Italian firm that prepared it for auction. With much fanfare and a jaw-dropping sale price of $7.7 million (6.65 million euros) to an anonymous buyer last month, Big John became a big deal—and added fuel to an ongoing, thorny debate among scientists, auctioneers, commercial paleontologists, and private landowners. 

Where's the beef? It was on sale for six years and no museum came forward to buy it and museums have some wealthy patrons. Very wealthy patrons. Paintings go for a lot more. 

Austria: ends most Covid-19 restrictions after civil unrest and protests. Link here. Has anyone notice that the most current Austrian surge is now ending. Posted yesterday. In fact, the restrictions were due to end this week anyway. Mandatory vaccinations still on the table, starting February, 2022, as far as I know.