This $440,000 Porsche Car­rera GT was parked on a basic res­i­den­tial street in Aspen. That’s yours truly stand­ing next to it, taken by yours truly’s wife.

That was the very first one I had ever seen in real life. And it was just parked out where any­one could lean against it or scratch it or... Well, any­how, I was amazed that the owner(s) had dri­ven it to Aspen. I was fur­ther amazed that they had not parked it in a garage.

Fine art, for all to see.

Now I have to admit, if some­one gave me one and even paid for the fuel and insur­ance, I would not be able to drive it. I’d be think­ing all the time of how much that money could do in the devel­op­ing world to improve lives — or save lives. But it would be fun to take it for a quick spin!

What con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion have you seen in the last few weeks?

Again, Aspen. A new brand to me — Mon­cler. They pro­duce clothes at greatly inflated prices. Try $1,300 for a down jacket — not even a super-warm one. (Quan­tity is dif­fer­ent than qual­ity, they may tell you.)

Of course Aspen has a store exclu­sively fea­tur­ing their wares. It seemed like all they had were short jack­ets. How­ever, their web­site fea­tures stuff you’d see on the runway.

I was tempted to run away.

Franck Muller makes watches. Or the com­pany named after him does. They are based in Geneva, Switzer­land but have a ded­i­cated store in Aspen, Colorado.

Mr. Muller was known as the “Mas­ter of Com­pli­ca­tions” — because his cre­ations were very com­pli­cated — many have sev­eral dials and mech­a­nisms to tell more than just time. They are works of art, if you like that style. I looked at the tag hang­ing on one in the win­dow — $21,000. That is a com­pli­cated thing to grasp.

Yes, Aspen attracts peo­ple who can afford more than one of those time­pieces. Maybe one for each day of the week.

I pre­fer the sim­ple. (When I’d have to take out a 30-year loan just for a watch, some­thing would be very wrong in my lit­tle world.)