Stamps, mugs, coins. How boring.There are few people in the world who can pride themselves on a car collection that gives one goosebumps.Among the few, very few elect who can afford to expand their car fleet of supercars as easily as we go shopping at the supermarket, is Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei, currently the world's longest-serving monarch of the world.
This is in all probability the richest collection of cars in the world.And, on the other hand, there is little to be surprised about.Recently in charge of making an estimate of the Sultan's car fleet was Forbes magazine.According to Forbes, the Sultan of Brunei has a net worth of $28 billion more or less.
Brunei, as it is known, is located off the Northwest coast of Borneo and is an oil and natural gas rich nation. The Sultanate began in 1967.Leaking anything from these states, not exactly emblems of democracy, is never easy. In addition to the numbers, Forbes makes us aware of a curiosity: the servants of the Sultan of Brunei have a Rolls-Royce in the driveway, always running 24/7, and that members of his harem are paid over $200,000.00 per week.Understandably, the collection has been the subject of speculation and admiration for decades. The royal family of this small nation on the island of Borneo accumulated a vast array of vehicles especially between the 1980s and 1990s. During that period, however, few had the opportunity to visit the collection and take photographs: the secrecy surrounding it was almost total, and images from those years are rare to see on the Internet (one such car is a 1990 Range Rover limousine-sized car).
Now, thanks to the Instagram account @bruneicarcollection, we have the opportunity to peek at images taken by a photographer who, in early 2001, had the exceptional opportunity to visit the collection for only two hours.Limited time and the enormous size of the collection obviously prevented him from photographing all the cars, but these images still give us a glimpse of what the Sultan was holding 23 years ago.And now after you have surely gone to peek - and drool - on Instagram let us all humbly return together to admire our stamps and mugs. After all, material value is not what matters, right?
