Just a number? Lucky Japanese cell phone numbers worth Millions!

August 31, 2006 on 2:14 pm | In Quirky News, News, Interesting |

Many of us take our cell phone numbers for granted. Sure, it’s nice to get an easy-to-remember number, or something with a nice flow to it, but in Japan, it seems that a cell phone number is a lot more than JUST a number. It can also be worth a LOT of money.

In fact, cell phone numbers containing special sequences of numbers like “123…”, sequences of numbers considered lucky to the Japanese, or cell numbers with repeating digits in the last 4 to 8 numbers are highly desirable and are often sought by company bosses and business people as a status symbol akin to an expensive watch, a flash sports car or… a yacht!?

…and they are selling for a fortune online, typically for 10’s of thousands of Yen (10,000 Yen = USD85 approx), but sometimes for hundreds of millions (100,000,000 Yen = USD854,000 approx)!.

Cell numbers containing the number 7 are thought to be very lucky, since the Japanese have the Seven Gods of Good luck, Shichifukujin. The number 8 is also favored as it is associated with good fortune. The tetraphobic Japanese regard sequences of the numeral 4 as not so lucky, however, since it is widely associated with death (“shi” in Japanese is a close homonym for the word for death).

The buying/selling of these ‘lucky’ numbers on all of Japan’s carriers has accelerated in recent times - MSN/Mainichi reports:

The prices of both au and Vodafone phone numbers have reportedly risen to two or three times the normal price recently. It is thought that people are buying the numbers before the number portability system is introduced in October, aiming to switch the numbers to NTT DoCoMo phones after the system is introduced so the price of the numbers rises even further.

“The really good numbers could sell for prices in the range of 1 billion yen,”

NTT DoCoMo, who holds more than half of Japan’s cellular market with more than 50 million customers has the numbers that are most sought after.

1 Billion Yen, eh? That’s more than 8.5 Million USD! Next time you sign up for a new cell service, take your time and choose your number wisely….you never know, this may just catch on!

[Source MSN/Mainichi]