This 'No. 2' replica of a famed gold toilet is going up for auction-and it's perfect for a ballroom

By Brett Arends

With gold now $4,017 an ounce, the value of the item's gold content alone is $10 million

The gold toilet, created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, is entitled "America."

A $10 million solid gold toilet is going up for sale, just in time for the building of President Trump's new ballroom.

The fully functioning toilet, created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and entitled "America," will go up for auction at Sotheby's this month.

It's a replica of one that was stolen from England's Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill.

Or, as the British Broadcasting Corporation reports, this version is "number two."

Patriotic Americans everywhere will insist that someone suitable from the White House, such as deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, be sent to Sotheby's on 18 November and buy the toilet on behalf of the nation.

What could be a more fitting symbol of our country's greatness than a solid gold White House toilet, purchased for $10 million, without Congressional authority, by a bankrupt government that can't even pay its own workers?

The toilet is made of 18 karat gold, meaning the metal is 75% gold and 25% alloy. It weighs just over 101 kilograms. With gold now $4,017 an ounce, the value of the item's gold content alone is $10 million - not counting the extra value for artistic merit. Sotheby's says the gold price on the day of auction will determine where the bidding starts.

A working gold toilet seems a much better use of bullion than, say, making it into bars and then just having it sit, useless, in vaults in Fort Knox.

The fully-functioning solid gold toilet was exhibited and put into public use at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016, with a guard stationed outside the bathroom to protect the work.

The U.S. government owns 8,133.46 metric tons (8.1 million kilograms) of gold bullion in its national reserves, supposedly held at Fort Knox but subject to the usual conspiracy theories. Based on Cattelan's masterpiece, if melted down that bullion would be enough to make 107,000 of these golden toilets.

What could make America greater?

The bullion could also usefully be melted down and used for decoration elsewhere in the official White House, or, say, in the "southern White House" in Mar-A-Lago.

At current, near-record gold prices the reserves are worth just over $1 trillion. They have tripled in value since November 2016 and doubled since the start of last year. At the federal government's current rate of spending, all that gold would be enough to cover less than three months' worth of federal deficits.

Which may help explain why gold is at $4,000 an ounce in the first place. The last time the federal government actually balanced its books, in 2000, gold changed hands at less than $300 an ounce.

Read next: Why I'm buying more gold

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11-01-25 1007ET