When an iconic red phone box due to be offered at auction sold before bidding started at £15,000 last month, it reminded me of how seemingly mundane items can take on a new life when their original purpose has been fulfilled.

In this case the phone box had been a feature of the streetscape for decades close to Lincoln Cathedral. The price achieved was a full £9,000 above the anticipated auction estimate.

So why do such things make this sort of money? In short, design and nostalgia, twin qualities that can turn what has been a workaday object into folk art.

Think about it: the cliché views of London in Hollywood films have always been the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge, Bobbies on the beat, Beafeaters, Buckingham Palace, London taxis, red pillar boxes and the old red phones boxes – all classic images of supposedly more innocent and better days gone by.

The unique design of the phone box was the brainchild of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960), a well-known architect whose two most celebrated buildings were Battersea Power Station and Livepool Cathedral. He was also the grandson of Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-78), who designed both the Albert Memorial and, most famously, St Pancras Station.

Taking care with design so that it appeals to our aesthetic sense as well as being supremely fitted for its function gives objects the sort of longevity that less well thought out things lack.

In turn, this transition from functional object to folk art brings new life to things long past their sell-by date and creates whole new collecting fields such as street furniture, which can encompass everything from road signs and phone boxes to the long redundant fire stamps issued  to clients by insurance companies. It’s a good lesson that good design is not simply a luxury.

A few weeks ago I happened to mention the world’s rarest and most desirable stamp, the 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta, which was coming up for auction, estimated at $10 million to $15 million.

In the end it made $7.9 million hammer – still a substantial sum – with the buyer revealed as Stanley Gibbons, the world-renowned stamp specialists.

Now I learn that Gibbons has unique plans for the stamp, planning to treat it rather as others have been handling the new craze of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) by selling shares in it.

To that end, the company has launched a new website called 1c-magenta.com via which it plans to “democratise” the stamp. “For the first time ever, you will be able to own your very own piece of the British Guiana 1c Magenta,” the website promises.

At this stage, the website simply allows you to register your interest in becoming a part-owner. Presumably, Gibbons needs to gauge the level of interest to see how viable this approach is to capitalising on its acquisition.

It’s a canny approach, and if it works could provide a template for future business when it comes to the best of the best.

This sort of arrangement is almost purely for the investment collector rather than the fan, although serious philatelists may well jump at the opportunity to own a share in the world’s rarest stamp, however small that share may be.

Similar in that it creates an otherwise inaccessible opportunity is the trend in recent years to raffle houses. However small the chance, the purchaser of a £5 or £25 ticket might – just might – be the one who name comes out of the hat for the £1 million prize home. As they say with the National Lottery: You’ve got to be in it to win it.

The younger generation are said to value experiences more than possessions these days, which isn’t the best news for people like me who spend their time disposing of chattels at auction.

Having said that, Generation Z also seem rather taken with the latest fashions and footwear – the global market in trainers is now worth around £5 billion, I understand, so all is not lost on that front when it comes to acquiring material items.

However, the past week has been notable for what must surely be the record price for an ‘experience’ sold at auction: $28 million for a single ticket to join Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos for his maiden flight on the Blue Origin capsule as it leaves Earth’s atmosphere. That means that the unnamed buyer will be paying out around $9 million for each of the three to four minutes of the ten-minute trip that will be at zero gravity.

If we are genuinely at the beginning of what may later become mass space travel, then this exclusive experience may well prove a bargain. After all, to be one of just four passengers, including Bezos and his brother, on the trip will surely seal their position for posterity – once they are named, of course.

The statistics from the live auction are interesting too: 7,000 bidders took part, with pre-sale bids from 159 countries reaching $4.8 million before the live auction began took place on June 12. It’s yet another example of how impossible this process would have been without the internet – a facility without which Mr Bezos would not now be the world’s richest person.

I thought I’d seen it all until last week when I read a report about an Italian artist who had auctioned off an ‘invisible’ sculpture for $18,300.

How do you make a sculpture invisible? Er, you don’t. You simply pretend that you have made one, produce a plinth, say that although you can’t see it, it is certainly there, and then attract bids.

If this seems like lunacy, you may not be far wrong. However, Salvatore Garau explained away this exercise in conceptual art by saying: “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination.”

In doing so, he titled the work Io Sono (I am), arguing that the vacuum in which the ‘artwork’ sat was “nothing more than a space full of energy” – although I would counter that if it is a vacuum, then it wouldn’t have any energy, even if, as Garau continued, the Heisenberg Principle states that even ‘nothing’ has weight.

Nonetheless, if you can conjure no more than an idea from nothing, what was it that the successful bidder got for their money? A certificate of authenticity accompanied by a set of instructions on how to exhibit the invisible sculpture. These stipulated that it must be displayed in a five foot square space unencumbered by any obstruction.

Confident in his logic, Garau justifies his creation and its sale by arguing: “After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen?”

I’ll leave you with that thought.