Want A-Rod's House? Try 'eBay for Billionaires'

Perhaps you'd like to buy Alex Rodriguez's Miami mansion for $9,999,999? BillionaireXchange.com, which launched this week, touts itself as the first online marketplace exclusively for billionaires.

(BillionaireXchange.com)
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In the market for a 51-carat pink diamond? How about a $74 million, 313-room resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico? Perhaps you'd like to buy Alex Rodriguez's Miami mansion for $9,999,999?

These items--plus a slew of other pricey toys--are available on a new auction site aimed at the mega-rich. But will anyone with a significant net worth actually buy a big-ticket item online?

BillionaireXchange.com, which launched this past week, touts itself as the first online marketplace exclusively for billionaires. Of course, it's not; there were only 793 billionaires on the planet at our last tally of the World's Billionaires. The members-only site requires clients to have a mere $2 million in liquid assets.

Co-founder Quintin Thompson says the "billionaire" in BillionaireXchange is aspirational; the site is meant mostly for millionaires, but associating your company with millionaires is too ordinary to lure ultra-high-net-worth members. "Put a millionaire and billionaire in a room together," he says. "Only one of them is going to be happy to be there."

One place a billionaire probably would not be happy: on a Web site browsing auction ads for Bugatti race cars, Patek Phillipe watches and Gulfstream jets. Phil Ruffin, who is worth $1.85 billion and ranks 193rd on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, says he'd never log on to BillionaireXchange, or any other Web site, to shop. That'd be boring.

"I never buy anything without having a look at it and kicking the tires," says Ruffin, who owns the Treasure Island casino on the Las Vegas Strip, jets around in his tricked-out $85 million Boeing 737, and has twice won the annual Forbes billionaire poker tournament. "Half the fun of buying a big item is negotiating with the owner."

Thompson claims he's signed up 12 billionaires and insists the company can move the goods. During the site's 10-month trial he says a Saudi businessman purchased 14 used yachts for $14 million using the site.