Now You, Too, Can Buy a Million-Dollar Platinum Portrait of Your Face

Photography Tips  •  Portrait Photography

They say money can’t buy happiness. Unless your definition of “happiness” happens to be ordering a giant portrait of your face, composed of 10,000 shiny platinum balls molded by a Japanese company for a minimum of half a million dollars, in which case, I guess money’s pretty useful.

Watch the intense chemical compounding process here:

The company is called Platinum Sphere Portrait, and their system is simple: You and/or a loved one can sit down for a one- or two-hour portrait sitting, or provide a high-resolution photo of your own. A computer graphics team designs the layout of your platinum sphere portrait and sends it to you for pre-approval. If you say yes, they order approximately 10,000 variously-sized tiny balls of platinum and proceed to recreate your face.

Five-hundred-thousand dollars gets you 1,000 grams of platinum, while $1 million gets you 3,500 grams and, according to their website, “$UNLIMITED” gets you enough platinum to, presumably, fuel the entire South African economy through the next half-century.

Oh, and did you like that video? According to the company, you can have your own: “The setting process can be videotaped upon request.” Consider it a platinum cherry on top.