The man who read the Financial Times in the bins
The town knew him as Tin-Can Curt. He collected bottles by day and studied markets at the library.
Curt Degerman spent roughly three decades cycling around the northern Swedish town of Skellefteå collecting cans and bottles for the deposit refund. He was a familiar figure, dressed in a heavy coat, going through bins.
He also spent his afternoons in the town library reading the financial press. When he died of a heart attack in 2008, aged 60, he left an estate reported at around 1.4 million US dollars — held in shares, mutual funds and gold bars in a safe deposit box.
What is interesting about it
The usual retelling makes this a joke about appearances. The more interesting fact is that he was doing genuine, sustained research with no capital, no professional access, and no one to talk to about it — from a public library, using a free newspaper, for thirty years.
He could not trade frequently, had no broker whispering ideas, saw no continuous price feed, and had no peers to be embarrassed in front of. Every structural feature of his situation pushed toward doing nothing, which over three decades is close to the optimal strategy for most people and almost impossible to sustain when the opposite is available at all times on a phone.
The estate fight
His will left the money to a cousin. A relative contested it. The dispute was reported at the time and eventually settled. This detail is usually cut from the telling, because it spoils the shape of the story — and it is the most predictable part of it.
The mechanism
Valuation discipline is explained in Valuation discipline, in the Learn curriculum.
Where to check this
- Eccentric Swede turned empty cans into gold — The Local (Sweden)
- Tin collector worth £1 million leaves behind a legal battle — Gulf News
More from the quiet compounders
All Reckonings- Russ Gremel — He bought a thousand dollars of Walgreens and bought a nature reserve
- Ronald Read — The janitor with an $8 million portfolio
- Alan Naiman — The social worker who spent his life around children with nothing