Kicker - A $2 million pigeon

NICK EICHER, HOST: Sometimes it seems money grows wings and flies away.

Kind of like this: Can you imagine spending $2 million for a pigeon?

Now, now, not just any old pigeon, mind you—a racing pigeon.

Turns out there’s some serious money in the sport  that some say goes back as far as the year 220 A.D. 

Nikolaas Gyselbrecht is CEO of the auction house that sold the two-year-old superstar named New Kim. He explained why the bird was so valuable.

GYSELBRECHT: The pigeon New Kim is very special because she’s very young, so we can still breed—or the buyer can still breed many years from the pigeon.

Lifespan: about 15 years. Fertility: about a dozen eggs per year. Doing the math, maybe these pigeon investors know something the rest of us don’t.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

(AP Photo/Francisco Seco) Carlo Gyselbrecht, co-owner of Pipa, a Belgian auction house for racing pigeons, shows a two-year old female pigeon named New Kim after an auction in Knesselare, Belgium, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2020.

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