How to earn 170,000,000 Amex Membership Rewards points in a single transaction

I’m sorry if I’m killing anybody’s deal here, but this is too good not too share. Here’s how you can earn 170,000,000 Amex MR points in a single transaction:

1. Be very wealthy
2. Have an Amex charge card that lets you buy extremely expensive things
3. Buy something that costs $170,000,000

Don’t think this will work? Just ask Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian, who just purchased Amedeo Modigliani’s “Reclining Nude” at an auction for $170.4 million dollars–and he plans to put it all on his Amex Centurion.

The Associated Press contacted Zach Honig from The Points Guy (obviously because yours truly was unavailable) and here’s Zach’s overview of what 170,000,000 points will get you:

Honig estimates that if Liu converted his Membership Rewards points into one of a number of airline frequent flier programs, he and his and his family could travel anywhere, in style. He could fly 3,000 times between the U.S. and Europe in the ultra-deluxe first class suites offered by Singapore Airlines (estimated cost: $17,800 round trip), if he converted points to Singapore’s program. Even if Liu wanted to use his AmEx points to pay for flights, a less efficient use of them, he could still redeem those points for hundreds of first class flights anywhere in the world.

And if he converted his points to Delta Skymiles, he could take as many as three roundtrip flights between New York and Cleveland!

Another interesting point: as the article notes, Amex’s transaction fees are over 2%, so this single transaction represents millions of dollars for Amex.

Anyway, sorry to go all Million Mile Secrets on you and kill another deal, but I just felt you all had the right to know about this. Better get in while the getting’s good!

EDIT: See Gary’s post for more on this. He adds in the comments: “He’s said to be earning 1.5 points per HONG KONG DOLLAR (and therefore 2 BILLION points). However it takes 15 points to transfer to a single airline mile in the program.”