Australian cops find cocaine stash in PS5 from Portugal Australia's federal police (AFP) have arrested a chap for attempting to import cocaine inside a PlayStation 5. The Feds spotted a PS5 on its way from Portugal to Sydney and deemed the package suspicious. Sony's newest console is in such short supply that the Japanese mega-corp has established a lottery for would-be-purchasers …
So that's A$231 per gram ... clearly Cocaine would now be at the same investment level as bitcoin over the years. I always see cops making these ridiculous drug valuations everywhere - the police find it so much more effective to lie about the prices of items than actually tell the truth.
Cops are much smarter criminals than the ones they arrest and jail.
It might contain anything from 75% to 90% pure Coke and will probably get cut at least once
So that 1.5 Kg will become anything from 2Kg to 3 Kg depending on the scruples of the dealers..
I have no idea how much a gram of Coke goes for in Australia, but I presume that you could comfortably buy COD Modern Warfare and still have change to spare.. It's just that you wouldn't have a console to play it on.. Oh well, just have to nicely roll up that 100 dollar bill and put it to some use....
> So that's A$231 per gram ...
While I haven't tried to buy any cocaine recently, that is not beyond an extravagent price for 'retail' cocaine in Australia if sold by the gram (of course buying in larger quantities would be cheaper, an 8-ball might be 2/3rds that per gram, and conversely in smaller quantities, e.g. 1/2g, it'd be more like like 150% per g).
As of a couple of years ago, the typical price of a gram of cocaine in Australia was reportedly just under AUD 310 (GBP 168).
https://finance.nine.com.au/personal-finance/australia-has-the-second-most-expensive-cocaine-in-the-world/9cf2a89d-efe2-45d3-a91b-3c1137edc55d
Back when i was young and meddling with things best left unmeddled with, it was widely believed that the values presented by the police were not the value of the final saleable product, but included the sales up the chain. So the Importer sells to the Distributor for $X, the Distributor sells to the Dealer for $Y, and the Dealer sells to the User for $Z.
The price reported by the Police was therefore not the quantity x $Z (as you would perhaps expect), but quantity x $(X+Y+Z). Hence, why the values always seemed inflated.
I have no idea if this is still the case now...
Cops always overinflate the price of drugs as it means more time if a conviction is obtained as the judge usually doesn't have a clue about the weight and actual value. It's value based on rough UK street price per gram not that I take it would be $124,128.11 so pretty much half. However what they don't take into account is how much it is cut by the time it gets to the street and how many dealers it has to pass through. How much it is cut increases the value. How many dealers in the chain before it gets to the street lowers the value because everyone takes their own cut of the money and potentially cut the drug. 1.5kg isn't a lot so I would assume these low level dealers or even users have took a punt at getting their own supply. There's an article from Sept on the Guardian where Australia seized two tonnes of the stuff. That's the big dealers.
They aren't lying, technically, but they're presuming the whole kilo is cut into double the amount and sold in half gram amounts for maximum markup.
That wouldn't happen in real life, but that is where these valuations come from. Similarly, for cannabis, their valuations are based on the idea of selling the WHOLE plant, gram joint by gram joint, including stems and roots.
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