This houseplant is $54,000

Last week I hosted bookclub, as any 27-year-old NYC female does. Anyways…

At bookclub, one of the girls was telling us about a cool way she was able to make a bunch of cash.

She was offered $70/day to water a families Bonsai trees while they go on vacation.

Thats $490 for a full week.

As we dove into the details, a chord was (obviously) struck in my brain.

Heres the story.

They have 21 Bonsai Trees.

My first thought is, how does one fit that in an apartment.

But secondly, where do you get these? and why are you paying someone $70/day to water them?

Turns out, Bonsai trees range in size and price. Drastically range — anywhere from a few hundred through a few thousand, but there have even been sales in the millions.

This family is genius. What they do is (sorry, kinda morbid) look through the NY Times obituary section and then cross check for ongoing estate sales. Sometimes the plants are listed, other times they will take a guess on which sales will have these bonsais.

They will pay ~10% of the full cost.

See, at market value, price is an immediate dictation of the Bonsais age.

So this family, pays under market value. Than uses time to their advantage to house these plants, only paying for infrequent care, and eventually… could sell all of these for 5 digits.

Plant Arbitrage.

Its genius. And I am dumbfounded by how niche of a plant obsession this is.

My call out to you - if you have a Bonsai, I’d go see how much you could sell it for.

Maybe this is a better chance than winning the lottery?