A South African businessperson living in Canada has managed to sell his collection of four gold castings of Nelson Mandela’s hands for $10-million – in bitcoin.
During a conference earlier this month Malcolm Duncan – a South African businessperson who has been living in Alberta for the past 12 years – sold the castings to an Ontario based cryptocurrency company called Arbitrade.
The full collection is made up of two Mandela fists, his full hand and a palm impression. It will be handed over to Arbitrade in late April.
In 2002, Mandela sat down to have his right hand casted by South Africa’s Harmony Gold mining group. Each set weighs 9kg and is composed of 99.999% pure gold.
The original plan was for Harmony Gold to cast 27 sets for each year Mandela was in prison but the project was stopped after only one set was completed.
According to Duncan, this set was sold to him at double the R1.8-million purchase price with the understanding Harmony would give half to Mandela’s charities.
“His fingerprints on his gold hands are probably more prominent than mine on my own hands. They really succeeded in getting the definition on the hands,” Duncan said. Read more