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- The US government has been auctioning Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic's wine collections.
- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has seized many unusual assets from failed banks over the years.
- The list includes a Dallas Cowboys stake, a coal mine on fire, and a human skull, the WSJ reported.
A federal agency has been auctioning off Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank's wine collections, after seizing control of the failed lenders and their assets this spring. The bottles are far from the strangest assets to end up in government hands as a result of bank collapses.
Heritage Auctions shelled out about $150,000 including fees for about 1,900 bottles of wine previously owned by SVB, and close to $20,000 for more than 400 bottles from First Republic's cellar, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The auctioneer secured the wines at a roughly 40% discount to their market value, the newspaper said.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. guarantees deposits of up to $250,000 in a single FDIC-insured bank. It covers the cost of providing that protection in part by collecting dues from banks and selling assets it seizes.
The FDIC has found itself in possession of many weird and wonderful "specialty assets" previously owned by banks. The list includes 25,000 pounds of frozen rabbit, a 12% stake in the Dallas Cowboys in the 1980s, and even a cooler containing a human skull, an agency representative told the Journal.
The FDIC also seized company planes, pianos, aquariums, and derelict churches and synagogues. Once it wound up with a coal mine that was apparently on fire the same day its owner shut down, the newspaper reported.
"I guess you could say that the failed-bank side of the FDIC's work reflects the diversity of the banking business, from earth to the heavens above," Jay Rosenstein, an agency employee who highlighted the strangest seizures in an internal newsletter, wrote in 2006, per the Journal.
The government's haul from First Republic also included a 13-seater corporate jet, and a pair of nine-pound eagle figurines that were handmade in France from Baccarat crystal, according to the report.