Stamp dealer

As Briley himself wrote in his recent memoir, it is incredible today to believe that they were just sitting there, totally ignored by the investment community and waiting for me to come along.

Of course, the gentleman running the private club did not appreciate a 20-something stamp dealer pointing out that they were asleep at the wheel.

When Briley tried to advertise a share issue in 1965, the New Zealand Herald flat out refused to print his ads.

The Attorney General laid criminal charges of false pretenses against him, every single one of which failed in court.

It is a grim, sordid end that rightly destroyed his personal reputation.

And it blows apart the harmless, eccentric bachelor myth that the business press had wrapped around him for decades.

When we step back and look purely at the 60-year investment experiment from the Wellington stamp dealer to BIL to GPG, what do we take away from it? So, probably three things that jump out to me.

First, every strategy has a ceiling.