What-If Investments

New York magazine asks, "What if you'd had $100,000 to spend in 1998?" According to the magazine, if you'd bought 3,298 shares of Apple stock in 1998 (at $30.32 per share, an investment of $99,995), it would now be worth just shy of $2 million.

Sounds great, huh? Now consider this: If you had bought 1,500 shares of an early social-networking site, theglobe.com, in 1998—which, at $63.50 per share means a $95,250 investment, it would be worth just $30 today.

This is a fun game. New York also applies it to gold (you would have been disappointed for a while, but eventually your $100,000 would have tripled), the domain name consumers.com (it would now be worth $250,000, according to SwiftAppraisal.com), and cases of 1998 Dom Pérignon (64 cases at $1,559 a case would now be worth $115,136).