“At Least $500 Million Worth of Art in Their House”: Mike Tyson’s Stunning Confession About Money

Mike Tyson opened up about money and wealth in the recent episode of ‘Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson’ podcast with Swizz Beatz. Tyson talked about the days when he was 21 years old, and most of the big names in the industry were his neighbors. The conversation sprouted from the art collection journey of Swizz Beatz, and Tyson added on about his experience with wealthy people owning art. Swizz Beatz speaks about art being a currency, and how people don’t explore it as much as they should. According to him, it’s part of the culture and everyone should embrace it.

Swizz Beatz began collecting art in the early 2000s and has since amassed a significant collection of works. In addition to his personal collection, Swizz Beatz has also used his platform to promote the work of emerging artists. In 2019, he curated an exhibition at the Paddle8 Gallery in New York City featuring works by artists from the Caribbean and Africa.

Mike Tyson’s history with wealth

DJ Whoo Kid starts off the conversation about art and paintings. Kid said that despite Swizz Beatz, only Jay Z is the one who has talked about art in his raps. Still, he added, what Swizz Beatz did was something else. Swizz basically encouraged everyone to get involved with it. Swizz Beatz admitted that he saw art and paintings as a new form of currency. That’s the reason, he also tried to support new artists by opening The Dean Collection and giving them a complete hundred percent of their sales.

Mike Tyson, on this note, remembered something from back in his days. He added, “I had the opportunity to meet some people that have at least 500 million dollars of art in their house, and that’s nothing.” He then continued, “Listen these people got money, billions of dollars! That’s why the Nazis confiscated all of it.”

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Tyson also tells a story from the time when he used to live in Bernardsville in New Jersey. And one day, he went to the house of Jane Engelhard, and there she had a Van Gigh’s blue painting. He refused to touch it because if he did, the alarms would go off, so the painting was quite priceless.

Tyson’s thoughts on money

Mike Tyson had access to money at a very young age, and he may have had to face a lot of repercussions because of it. At one time, Tyson used to spend $400,000 monthly while only earning two figures.

All these mistakes gave him a pint of realization that money has nothing to do with one’s happiness or beauty. To quote his words, he said, “And so um very early in my life I experienced, I don’t know, vast wealth and I realized that people believe that money’s gonna make them happy, make them beautiful but if you believe that a lotta money’s gon make you happy, you never had a lot of money before.”

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