The 15 Awesomest Ways Nicolas Cage Spent His Money

15 Castles (Plural)

If you ask a little girl what she’d do with millions of dollars, she’d probably say “buy a castle,” but Nicolas Cage is a big girl, so he bought two -- one in England and one in Germany, because you can’t have your castles in the same country. That would just be silly.

14 Private Islands (Again, Plural)

At a certain level of wealth, you will have the thought, “I’m bored of this private island. I want to go to my other private island.” That’s why Cage bought not one, not two, but three private islands in the Bahamas. Maybe he just really wanted his own Bermuda Triangle.

13 15 Homes

You ever forget you live somewhere? Nic Cage definitely has. At the height of his homeowning mania, Cage owned 15 different houses across the country, from California to Rhode Island, like “This Land is Your Land” but with more Elvis memorabilia.

12 An Actual Haunted Mansion

One of those homes was the Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans, famously owned by serial slave killer Madame Lalaurie, because why go to all the trouble of hunting ghosts when you can just buy them? He said he was hoping the house would inspire him to write a horror novel, but it seems it mostly inspired him to spend more money.

11 Four Yachts

Four yachts might seem excessive -- it’s not like you can even drive more than two of them at a time -- but Cage explained that he kept them at four different seaside properties around the world, so that makes sense. Nobody likes Bojacking their yachts all over creation.

10 Nine Rolls Royce

At this point, he’s just doing the Twelve Days of Christmas. In an apparent attempt to outdo his Gone in 60 Seconds character, Cage has owned more than 50 (probably legally purchased) classic cars, including nine Rolls Royces (Royce? Rice?), and 30 motorcycles.

9 The Shah of Iran’s Lamborghini

Probably the most eyebrow-raising item in Cage’s garage was a Lamborghini previously owned by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. He paid nearly $500,000 for it -- and that was in 1997 money, which would be approximately the price of your soul today -- but the property of an overthrown monarch just hits different.

8 Nine-Foot Pyramid-Shaped Burial Tomb

In 2010, well after his financial troubles became public knowledge, Cage kept the good times rolling by paying around $50,000 for the last two plots in a famous New Orleans cemetery and then building a nine-foot pyramid-shaped tomb on top of it for unknown reasons. Regeneration chamber? Undoing a voodoo curse? Just a nice place to spend eternity? Probably that last one.

7 A $150,000 Octopus

At $150,000, that must have been one talented octopus, although Cage did claim that it helped him with his acting. Maybe it was that Octopus Teacher.

6 Two Venomous Cobras

He also paid $276,000 for a pair of king cobras, which you’d think would be super chill, right? What objection to being your friendly Disney sidekick could something with “king” in the name possibly have? Nevertheless, Cage was dismayed to find the cobras constantly tried to attack him, and then his neighbors got pretty upset when he told the story on Letterman and found out there were freaking cobras next door, so he had to give them up.

5 A Shark

Sharks are surprisingly cheap, but the 500-gallon tank Cage had to buy to house it set him back considerably. It was just a small part of the veritable zoo he’d acquired, though, and you know what they say: In for an octopus, in for a shark.

4 A Crocodile

Not much is known about Cage’s crocodile, so we can only assume it escaped after one day into the Los Angeles sewer system to follow its dreams of starring in a Peter Pan reboot.

3 The First Superman Comic

Cage is known to be such a big Superman fan that he named his unfortunate son Kal-El, so when he got the opportunity to buy a pristine copy of the first Superman comic in 1995, he probably just started throwing down Benjamins until someone told him to stop. He ended up paying $150,000, which must have stung when it was stolen from his house in 2000, but he sold it for more than $2 million in 2011 after it was recovered from a Southern California storage locker, so he considers it a “good investment.”

2 Meteorite

Cage paid $25,000 for a “famous” Martian meteorite that turned out to be a bit of a disappointment after 1) scientists determined it did not, in fact, prove life on Mars, as previously believed, and 2) it was stolen. Well, he thinks it might have been stolen. You know how it is: Sometimes, you just misplace a rock that could pay off your student loans.

1 A (Stolen) Dinosaur Skull

Undoubtedly the most awesome way Nicolas Cage blew his money was on a Tyrannosaurus skull that he paid $276,000 for at auction just before his empire came crumbling down. Unfortunately, he had to give it back a few years later, as it turned out it had been stolen from the people of Mongolia, but he reportedly outbid Leonardo DiCaprio for it, so at least he stopped him from enjoying it. That guy has enough.

Top image: Nicolas Genin/Wikimedia Commons