While you were busy taking your boss's Lhaso apso out for a duck lunch and cucumber eye treatment, 200 one percenters were amassing a collection of items that, if not for the large pedestal and sterile white rooms they were displayed in, would be considered garbage. And they paid millions to do so.

The art world is clearly benefitting from sales of Gucci handbags. François Pinault -- the man behind luxury goods purveyor PPR, which owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and the Christie's auction house, among other holdings -- made the top 10 in ArtNews magazine's list of the top 200 art collectors in the world for the first time this year -- perhaps because he opened his very own museum, the Palazzo Grassi, in Venice in April.

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