Cartier paid for its Fifth Avenue mansion with $100 and a pearl necklace.
In 1917 Pierre Cartier offered the banker Morton Plant a double strand of natural pearls, worth $1 million, which his wife had admired in the shop window. Plant took it, with $100 in cash, for his mansion at 653 Fifth Avenue. Cultured pearls then sank the market, and in 1957 the necklace sold at auction for $151,000.
Cartier on Brandseum