Here’s the sixteenth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly
LiteratEye #16: Missed the Long Slide on the Slippery Economic Slope? It’s Not Too Late to Fake It
By W.J. Elvin III
June 5, 2009
Why be everyday poor when you can easily fake upscale, major-league financial ruin? For a few bucks you can be in the game in grand style. When your happy hour pals crank up the wailing and lamentation, you can jump right in, waving evidence of really big losses.
Name your poison: EnRon? WorldCom? DrKoop.Com? Kmart Corp.? You’ll find stock or bond certificates for all of those and many, many more catastrophes at Scripophily.com. That’s where dead stock and bond certificates go to be recycled as collectibles.
My personal favorite, the one I’ve been lusting over for months, is a bit more pricey than most. But then, it’s also a true rarity with a lot of history and drama behind it. It’s a Poyais land grant certificate, selling on Scripophily for $495.
I’d been reading up on the exotic tropical paradise of Poyais but didn’t realize it’s senior ranking in the lore of scandals and scams. Then, one morning not long ago, I opened ArtofthePrank.com and there it was, listed right up in the top ten hoaxes of all time. Continue reading “LiteratEye #16: Missed the Long Slide on the Slippery Economic Slope? It’s Not Too Late to Fake It”