Kino

does anyone know exactly how many people have an american express black credit cards aka the centurion card? here's what i don't get... did any of you see newlyweds back in the day where jessica simpson was paying for dinner with her black card and she said that she was one of the last people given one, and american express wouldn't be issuing anymore. well that was like 5 years ago, if not more. american express must be handing them out like candy because i see sooooo many people in vegas with them. are they really that special anymore? if i were american express i'd take it easy on giving them out because pretty soon they will start losing their exclusivity. i mean i see american express platinum cards less than i see centurion cards now!

1bootcamp

Hey I read on someone's blog that there's about 17,000 people that have an American Express black card. But most of them aren't in the U.S - less than 10. They said more than half are in Asia and the Middle East. I don't know if theses numbers are true or not since it was just from a blog though.

It does seem like everyone [rich] has one now. I know they bumped up the fee from $2500 to $5000 to join which was probably needed so this card doesn't oversaturate the market. A lot of business people have them because all you have to do is charge 250k or more a year on your Platinum and you can get upgraded. If you have a business and put all your supplies, orders, and traveling on your American Express that wouldn't take long.

Is the the Centurion card really worth it though? From what I know the fee to join now is $5000 and then $2500 annual fee. What benefits does this give that are so much better than the American Express Platinum Card that has a $450 annual fee?

Cucumber

I use to work retail and I worked at a lot of high end stores like Fred Segal and Neiman Marcus and before that some not high end stores. Let me tell you the American Express black card is not rare at all. All kinds of people had them and not just celebrities. There's got to be more than 17,000 people that have them because it seems like there's that many in Los Angeles alone. It's became as common as the Platinum card now. If Amex was smart they would increase the requirements to 1 mil per year and 10k annual fee so everyone doesn't have one. But with the annual fee now there's no real benefits in having it that are much better than the Platinum. They really should give you more for your money because I have several friends with black cards and there's nothing they give you that Platinum cards don't really.

The green card. Why does American Express still even have that? Who would want to be seen with a Green card when there's all these high end cards now!

KC95

my friend's family does construction and all of them have american express black cards for their business and they are not rich or anything. i'm really not impressed at all. if you run a construction business and you put all your purchases for building supplies on credit, how hard is it to rake up 250k per year doing that? not hard at all. in fact you'd be doing like 250k per house probably. so i think for the business version they should either get rid of it or make it be a $1 million limit or more.

fffresh

Far too many people have it I see them all the time. I hear there's no real advantage over the Platinum American Express too. The black card should up their benefits because they may get away with charging $5000 to sign up for now but I can't see that lasting. People will realize they're paying that much for a piece of plastic, I mean piece of metal

Mogul of Pineapples

Here's the numbers for outside of the United States, which is where the most Centurions are issued anyway:

• United Kingdom: 18,500
• Hong Kong: 13,500
• Germany: 10,500
• Australia: 6,000
• Spain/Sweden/Italy/Netherlands: 4,500
• Switzerland: 2,800
• France: 1,500
• Singapore: 1,300
• Saudi Arabia: 1,000
• Israel: 800
• Middle East (other countries): 500

These numbers are from a press kit for the Centurion magazine ad sales in Asia and Europe.

http://www.adinternational.be/pdf_re...ion_Europe.pdf

Being that the magazine is only given to cardholders, it can be assumed that everyone who gets the magazine also has a card.

fffresh

Nice job. I bet American Express didn't realize they were revealing that too when they publish their ad press kits.

What do we have, about 50k or 60k black cardholders outside of the United States? You figure probably another 30k to 40k here and that means theres 100k in the world. Not so rare is it now? Yet people STILL pay $5,000 for it?

misterblack

For anyone who is not eligible for the Centurion black card, I’d be willing to make a deal to list you as an additional cardholder.

Basically I’m eligible for the Centurion Card (at least for the next month) and the deal is that you pay the setup and ongoing annual fees for both of us. And you promise to pay your bill on time. My email is mediasolutionschennai@gmail.com

Mogul of Pineapples

Misterblack I don't think you had to spam and post the same thing in every single topic about the American Express Centurion.

Let me get this right.... you expect someone to pay $5,000 plus $2,500 to you in order to just be a secondary cardholder on your account? Don't you think if they have an extra $7,500 to waste on that, then they probably make enough to have their own black card in the first place? Think about it. Your "deal" is not a good one at all.

The Centurion isn't even a special card anymore. The only reason why I would see spending that much money on the annual fee and initiation fee is if you had such massive amounts of money it didn't matter, a few hundred million and up. Other than that it's a waste of money proportionate to your income.

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Floppster

I just joined this board however I already red this response so many times