Paul Allen recently bought a MiG-29

I am sure Paul Allen gives to worthy causes too, but it does look a tad awkward to me when he's building a museum of old planes while Bill Gates is pouring billions into buying mosquito nets and aids medication for 3rd world countries.

Google got a 'trainer', Paul got an actual fighter :-) But more seriously or not seriously, if you've got the cash you can collect unusual things. I've visiting private collections of train locomotives and military tanks (different collectors). The common theme is fascination with the technology and being able to 'touch it' as it were.

Back at the turn of the century when everyone was worried about Y2K and DEC^h^h^hCompaq^h^h^h^h^h^hHP wouldn't certify PDP-11's or some VAXen Y2K compliant a lot of them showed up on scrap market. Eric Smith drove with an Air-ride tractor trailer to two or three Bay Area data centers to pick up PDP-11/70's that Bank of America was throwing out (literally he showed up, they powered them down, and carried them out to the truck) because of this even through they were working fine.

Not really hacker news material though, maybe a poll "What would you collect if you had too much money?"