Contagion. No, not the dreaded Covid pandemic, but an interesting theory that emerged from the somewhat dry-sounding Journal of Consumer Research to explain how value is often invested in certain objects that are perceived to contain some ‘essence’ of their original owner as a result of having come into direct physical contact with that person.
It helps us understand how an otherwise fairly conventional walnut cigar humidor realised more than half a million dollars in 1996 as a result of its prior ownership by stogie-toking US President JFK.
It might also partly explain why, ten years later, a Givenchy evening gown worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s soared over an estimate of £50,000-70,000 to sell for £467,200 ($922,250) at Christie's. As Newman, Diesendruck and Bloom suggest in their paper,
“Manipulating the degree of physical contact that a celebrity has with an object dramatically influences consumers’ willingness to purchase it, and individual differences in sensitivity to contagion moderate this effect.”
The extent to which Marilyn Monroe came into direct physical contact with her own chest X-Rays in 1954 is surely beyond speculation (did she sit pondering her ghostly ribcage as she sipped a Martini with Joe DiMaggio?). They drew $45,000 when offered at a Las Vegas auction in 2010.
Michael’s Jordan’s Nike trainers have also benefited from this “contagion” effect — consumers’ willingness to purchase them being moderated by their “game-worn” condition. Thus, while a pair of the star’s sweat-anointed autographed Nike Air Jordan 1s of 1985 netted $560,00 (£443,960) at a Sotheby’s online auction in May 2020, a pair of his 1998 NBA Finals Air Jordan 13s soared up to $2.2m (£1.7m) at Sotheby’s in April this year. Celebrity trainers are now a separate asset class in investment portfolios and it seems the Contagion effect is an active part of the appraisal process.
Call it sweat equity.
Might the Contagion theory also help explain, at least in part, why Donald Trump hoarded so many boxes containing highly confidential government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A clearly panicked Trump has been clutching at straws to explain why he held on to the boxes. He told one interviewer that they contained stuff like golf shirts and other harmless personal paraphernalia. But here’s a theory: Trump, without realising it, is acutely sensitive to the Contagion effect.
There is a video of him on YouTube showing Wall Street Journal reporter Monica Langley around his collection of memorabilia in Trump Tower in 2015 (below). He gestures proudly towards a jumbled display of presentation cups, footballs, ceramic gewgaws and other trivial bric-a-brac — “a little bit junky” says Langley to her demented cicerone.
Undeterred, Trump points to Tom Brady’s Super Bowl helmet and caresses Mike Tyson’s belt, before holding up a gigantic Reebok sports shoe formerly owned by basketball star Shaquille O’Neal. The former President treats it as if it were the sacred prepuce. “He took it off after a game and handed it to me,” says Trump with manifest pride.
As the WSJ video makes clear, Trump is an inveterate hoarder. You don’t need to invoke academic theories of fetishism to identify his overvaluation of certain objects with celebrity associations.
I was present at the ‘Famous Faces’ Celebrity Watch Auction at the Tourneau Time Machine in Manhattan in February 1999 when Trump crossed the road from Trump Tower, took a seat at the front and bid $7000 (£4375) for Ronald Reagan’s stainless steel Colibri wristwatch. It was one of the cheapest watches on offer that night.
Reagan is known to have worn the watch several times. A few months ago I wrote to the White House to ask if Trump still owned the watch. Perhaps it was lying under all the other celebrity junk in his Manhattan office?
Unsurprisingly I received no reply. I’m sure the former President is too busy fighting off the impending investigation into why he kept so many government boxes that were not legally his to take. But the Contagion theory helps explain his bizarre fixation with holding on to things. We should remember that almost every object in the Mar-a-Lago boxes had at one time or another come into direct physical contact with Trump himself while in the White House, thereby in his eyes endowing even the most insignificant item with a numinous glow.
Some theories suggest that Trump may have been planning to share state secrets with foreign adversaries. The truth may be more banal. Trump is a child with an infantile view of the world that places him at the centre of everything. Objects are his security blanket. If the Contagion theory is correct, Trump may only have been keeping the contents of those boxes because, like the irrepressible narcissist that he is, he knows that a part of their value resides in their former proximity to him.
Was he dreaming of a huge boxed-set catalogue of The Donald J. Trump Collection at Sotheby’s, every humble object having been sanctified by his touch?
If that auction ever happens, he may have to watch it from the comfort of his prison cell.
Criminality: it’s contagious.