Wharton Genius Buys Every Basketball Jersey in Philly for Halloween

With Halloweekend just a few weeks away, Penn students are scrambling to bring together unremarkable “zombie,” “sexy librarian,” and “college student” costumes. But this time around, one Wharton junior is thinking outside the box. After seeing some of the other business ventures his fellow Whartonites were pursuing, Marcus Samuelson (W’19) identified yet another opportunity for arbitrage.

The idea struck Marcus while he was stumbling home from a costume mixer where 70% of the people in attendance were wearing Space Jam tanks. He vaguely remembered his Finance professor mentioning the board game "Monopoly" in one of the few lectures he’d attended that year, and, for some reason, the word felt appropriate. Then, as genius must have struck Einstein when he uncovered the theory of relativity, so too did it strike Marcus on that fateful night.

In that moment, he realized that if he could purchase every basketball jersey in Philly, he would have the Halloween costume market cornered on Penn campus. Students everywhere would be forced to buy their outfits through him or risk going to their Halloween parties in lame, non-basketball related costumes.

“Last year I thought about buying all of the permanent markers in CVS. That way, if anyone wanted to draw whiskers on their shitty 'sexy cat' costume, they’d have to go through me. But I was worried that I might end up huffing them all, so I ended up not doing it,” Marcus told UTB in an interview, while organizing his display case of 76ers apparel. “I also thought about buying up all the animal onesies too, but then it sort of looked like I had a really weird fetish, which I totally don’t have!” Samuelson continued, while sweating profusely and laughing nervously.

At press time, Marcus has already purchased 143 NBA and Penn Basketball jerseys, and his collection is continuing to steadily grow. We at UTB wouldn’t be caught dead going out on Halloween in anything other than a basketball jersey, so be sure to lock in your purchase before time runs out!