If Nicolas Cage has a yard sale...

[Jack Torrance]

If Nicolas Cage has to have a yard sale, what would you be interested in buying? I'm interested in the dinosaur skull before Leo gets his mits on it... or those shrunken heads sound cool.

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/movi...-spending.html

Nicolas Cage's Outrageous Decades-Long Shopping Spree

by Lindsay Robertson · November 4, 2009

An article in The Daily Beast says that Nicolas Cage's recent financial problems are, at least in part, due to outrageous, eccentric spending that puts even his most flamboyant fellow celebrities to shame.

If you can dream it, Nic Cage bought it: yachts, a jet, a castle, over 50 cars, over a million dollars' worth of comic books, multiple (supposedly haunted) mansions in New Orleans, two Bahamanian islands, shrunken heads that may or may not have been human, and, famously, a $500k Lamborghini once owned by the Shah of Iran. Most amusingly, Cage spent $276,000 on a dinosaur skull in a "heated auction with Leonardo DiCaprio." And though the article has details about Cage's many pets -- claiming that he kept antidote serum on his wall for the poison of his two King Cobras -- it neglects to mention at least one: Cage's pet octopus.

Cage's lawyer, Martin Singer, told The Daily Beast "Half the stuff you say is false. I'm not going to get into detail," so we may never know which half is true.

Cage made headlines last month when he filed a $20 million lawsuit against his former business manager. The suit claims the manager, Samuel Levin, failed to pay taxes and lost money in unsound investments, putting him "down a path toward financial ruin." This summer, the IRS placed a tax lien of over $6 million on Cage's New Orleans properties for unpaid income taxes.

Still, it's hard not to look at Cage's extreme-by-any-standards spending habits and not draw conclusions about his current money woes. For example, did he really need to customize a Bentley so elaborately that, when he got it back from the shop, he could no longer fit in it?

However lavishly Cage spent on himself, he's also been a very generous guy. The article reports that the actor gave $1 million to the Red Cross to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina, and $2 million to the human-rights group Amnesty International.

[sfmarine]

I got no beef with Cage..he makes 30 million a movie..he can afford it.

[Rblu-Dblu]

Originally Posted by sfmarine

I got no beef with Cage..he makes 30 million a movie..he can afford it.

I'd give him a few dollars to not be in any movie!

[P@t_Mtl]

I wonder if he as a huge collection of hair piece??

[Blu-Ron]

His comic book collection.
Met him in a comic book store once. His collection is friggin sweet!

[Rob71]

He's a big Elvis fan also and even added Lisa Marie Presley to his collection. But she got away.

[bageleaterkkjji]

i wonder if he owns Eleanor i'd buyer

[Grumpz]

If you ask me, good ol' Nicky is spending too much money on BAD COSMETIC SURGERY!

Has anyone noticed how messed up his face is getting? Looks like he's been hanging out with Joan Rivers' Doc.

[ludawg23]

That lawsuit is pretty weak, it seems to me that he's just bad with money.

You make all that money and you forget to pay your taxes? Give me a break...

I don't feel bad for him at all. He's not going to go bankrupt anytime soon and he has plenty of cash flow coming in. He just needs to hire a real financial planner/consultant.

He already has 3 movies in post-production, 3 movies in pre-production and another 4 movies being developed.

[supersix4]

Originally Posted by bageleaterkkjji

i wonder if he owns Eleanor i'd buyer

second that if he had that car in his stock pile put me down for a bid!

[ManUtd]

I'll take that $500k Lambo.

[LynxFX]

Originally Posted by ludawg23

That lawsuit is pretty weak, it seems to me that he's just bad with money.

You make all that money and you forget to pay your taxes? Give me a break...

It isn't necessarily him. When you make that kind of money, you don't sit at home and fill out a 1040-EZ. He hired a business manager that should have taken care of everything, taxes, investments, purchases etc. That person, apparently, failed to hire the right people to take care of the finer details, like paying income taxes. We don't know the full details, but if that guy didn't do his job then that is definitely grounds for a lawsuit.

[Sylin]

Originally Posted by LynxFX

It isn't necessarily him. When you make that kind of money, you don't sit at home and fill out a 1040-EZ. He hired a business manager that should have taken care of everything, taxes, investments, purchases etc. That person, apparently, failed to hire the right people to take care of the finer details, like paying income taxes. We don't know the full details, but if that guy didn't do his job then that is definitely grounds for a lawsuit.

That's a fair assessment. I have friends and relatives who are business owners, executives, athletes, authors... some of whom are worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a different ballgame than someone who makes $50k/year, or even $200k/year.

But it doesn't absolve Cage from some culpability. It's his responsibility to understand where his money is going and how it is being handled, even if you have to hire an outside firm to audit yourself. With that kind of money, it pays to be careful. It also pays to not overspend on ridiculous stuff.

PS... Nick Cage, if you're reading this, I'd like the comics. Thanks.