Backstory: In area codes, 212 is the only-est number
The ostentatious prefix for 'the city of bosses' is a pricey must-have – and not just in New York.
from the March 28, 2007 edition
Page 4 of 4
Vu Nguyen owns a cellphone shop in the Los Angeles area. He also sells 212 numbers from T-Mobile on eBay, although his procurement strategy, which he describes with words like "luck" and "gambling," seems less refined than Pugliese's.
The most he's ever earned for a 212 number is $500, but he once saw one going for $9,000. "There's lots of crazy things out there," he says. For arcane reasons, even within the 212-verse, some numbers earn more than others.
It begins simply enough, says Mr. Nguyen: The numbers that are easiest to remember – the 3000s and 2500s – fetch the highest prices. Numbers that spell people's names also bring in a pretty penny. Then there's the tricky terrain of cultural biases. The average American prefers a high quantity of 7s – the most commonly rolled number on a pair of dice and the day God rested.
In East Asian cultures numerology is perhaps taken much more seriously, says Nguyen. Eight is highly sought because it's considered a lucky number and sounds, in Chinese, like the word for "prosperity." A number ending in 8888 could earn up to $5,000, Nguyen estimates. But 4 sounds like the word for death, and is so reviled that the fourth floor is often absent from hospitals and hotels across East Asia.
Zhou, who speaks Mandarin, agrees. "You could give me [a 212 number with] seven fours ... and I wouldn't take it," he says.
So what would be worth $1,000?
"A number so special," he says, "you're going to want to port it around for the rest of your life ... maybe 212-888-8888."
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