Actually Works

SHUT and Matthew Willet made a skateboard out of gold. Real gold. Eighty centimeters long, twenty wide, four kilos, and it works—you can actually ride it. It comes with cotton gloves to keep it pristine, at least until you inevitably drag it down some concrete.

The price is around eleven thousand euros.

I respect the commitment to the bit. Not because it’s luxurious or exclusive, but because they made it functional. They could have made a sculpture, photographed it beautifully, sold it as art. Instead they made a skateboard that works. There’s something perfectly stupid about that.

I don’t want to own it, and I doubt I’d want to ride it. But I think I understand why someone might drop that kind of money on it—not for the status, but for the absurdity. For the fact that it exists as a joke that happened to be real.

There’s a kind of courage in that. Making something so deliberately impractical, so aggressively pointless, and doing it well anyway. Most luxury goods hide their purposelessness behind function. This one just… commits.