Golf legend Tiger Woods is on track to become the world's first billionaire athlete, a goal he should reach in a few short years at his current rate of income. Woods' career earnings will hit the $1 billion mark by 2010, Forbes reports, but given the taxes and management fees he has to pay, it will take another year for his net worth to catch up.

In 2007 alone, the mag estimates Woods earned $115 million, $65 million more than the second highest paid athlete, David Beckham. While several billionaires over the years have been world-class athletes, none has ever earned their fortune solely from a career playing sports before Woods. Of course, most of his wealth comes from endorsement deals as prize money accounts for only one-tenth of his earnings.

David and Victoria Beckham are notoriously generous with each other on their birthdays, splashing out on jewels, watches, cars and lavish vacations. Now The Sun reports that David Beckham bought Victoria her own winery in Napa and the pair will be making their own wine. Last month, the paparazzi spotted the pair along with celebrity pals, Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Seal, Heidi Klum, Kate Beckinsale and Len Wiseman, touring a winery. It was assumed they were just going wine tasting but apparently while winetasting, David presented Victoria with a bottle with her name on it. The couple isn't planning to go into the wine business, they will just be making their vintage for family and friends.

Charityfolks.com is auctioning off a chance to meet David Beckham at an LA Galaxy Game! Additional prize loot includes hotel and airfare, a meet-and-greet and photo op with David Beckham, a David Beckham autographed jersey, 2 VIP field seats to the game and a pregame tour of the stadium! The money earned from the auction benefits the Hattie B. Cooper Community Center. Located in one of Boston's poorest neighborhoods, the Cooper Community Center provides high-quality early education programs that encourage self-esteem, confidence, leadership and learning to at risk youth. Bidding is currently at $10,000 and is open until June 4th. What an amazing opportunity to help kids and attend a game in VIP style, I wonder if Posh will be there?

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--Eddie Van Halen and his brother, Alex Van Halen, have sold a home in the gated Summit neighborhood (where Britney Spears lives) in Beverly Hills for an undisclosed price expected to be in the $2 million and $3 million range (it had been on the market for $2,200,000). The house was the home of their mother who died in 2005.
--A vacant, 2.08-acre lot in Pacific Palisades area that was once was owned by Michael Keaton sold for $7.8 million.
--Actor Jesse Metcalfe has sold his home in the Hollywood Hills which was listed at $1.495 million for an undisclosed price.
--via the NY Times, Musician Duncan Sheik's Tribeca loft, shown above, is on the market for $2,850,000, down from $2,925,000 (he bought in 1999 for a little over $850,000). The loft is currently configured as a one-bedroom, one and a half bath unit with a soundproof recording studio. He is selling the unit, because he would like his home to be solely his home, and not also the place where he also works. The listing is here.
--Purchase price revealed, Tobey Maguire paid an even $10 million for nearly an acre in Brentwood.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--Julio Iglesias, who recently tore down his home in Indian Creek Village, Florida to build a new Spanish-style hacienda has picked up a place to hole up while he's waiting for his new home to be completed. He purchased a four-bedroom home for $7 million in the same community.
--A Greenwich, Connecticut house that once belonged to cosmetics queen Helena Rubenstein and was most recently renovated by Sheryl Leach, the creator of Barney the purple dinosaur, has been sold. It was most recently listed at $4 million.
--A private island compound in the Florida Keys built by late Alcoa Chairman Arthur Vining Davis is for sale for $20 million. The estate is 63 acres, has a helicopter pad and runs partly on solar power.

From the International Herald Tribune's Raising the Roof blog:
--via the Palm Beach Post, Donald Trump has lowered the price of his 6.5-acre Palm Beach estate from $125 million to $100 million.
--via the Telegraph, David and Victoria Beckham put their house in Madrid's La Moraleja neighborhood on the market last year for £6.5 million but are having trouble selling and may reduce the prie.
--via the London Times, A Russian businessman known as the "blini baron of Moscow" has paid $51.5 million for the former home of Gianni Versace.

From the Real Estalker:
--LeAnn Rimes and Dean Sheremet are reportedly putting their Nasvhille home on the market for around $2.3 million.
--The Real Estalker Mama takes a look at the monumental La Reve estate in Georgia, it's our estate of the day later today.
--Actor Harold Perrineau, who plays Michael on Lost has listed his West Hollywood home for $2.399 million.

From the New York Observer's Manhattan Transfers:
--Former hotel CEO Edward Scheetz has bought a SoHo penthouse for $10 million. it turns out that Scheetz is the owner of the apartment at 76 Crosby that we recently featured as an estate of the day.
--Bonnie Pfeiffer Evans, the widow of producer Robert Evans's brother Charles, had listed her t 895 Park Avenue place for $29.5 million. The apartment went to contract but the board-approved buyers a hedge-fund man and his wife, are getting divorced and quibbling over the sale. He wants to surrender their $2.95 million deposit and cancel the deal, she wants to continue with the purchase (perhaps because in the divorce she'd get half the value of the place.
--Luxury watch executive Benny Shabtai's contemporary townhouse at 870 Park Avenue which was listed in February 2004 for $23 million and has been through a rasher of price changes is now on the market for $33 million. The listing is here.
--Real estate developer Gary Sherman has put a vacant lot at 24-26 Downing Street. for sale at $20.25 million, for $45.4 million he'll sell you the lot with three fully built townhouses. The future townhouse have been listed individually for about $15 million. The listings are here.

From the LA Times Hot Property:
--New York socialite Alex Hitz has listed his Sunset Strip area home for $7.5 million. The property website for the gorgeous contemporary is here.
--Baseball paitcher Jaret Wright has put his Newport Beach home on the market for $1.795 million. The virtual tour is here.
--The longtime L.A. residence of jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, 65, has been put on the market at $2 million, completely furnished. The gated 2,800-square-foot house has been designed as the perfect retreat for artists, musicians and actors who want on-site facilities. The property website is here.

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You'd think, with a five-year soccer contract worth over $250 million, David Beckham wouldn't need any additional money. But he has just signed another big advertising deal, this time for Sharpie pens. Yes, the man who poses for Armani and has his own fragrance deal is now the face of the marker you use to mark cardboard markers. Becks is quoted as saying "I love to use Sharpie markers, so it's a natural choice for me to partner with them." I would have guessed that Beckham would be a Montblanc man. Perhaps they wouldn't pay him enough.

Soccer star David Beckham may have a side gig as an Armani model but that isn't the only thing he has going on. He also has lent his name to a line of soccer training facilities. The third David Beckham soccer academy, the Beckham World of Sport in Brazil will be located in a soon-to-be-built luxury resort, the Cabo Sao Roque resort near the city of Natal. Beckham is a partner in the resort and will oversee the academy. His other academies are in London and in Carson, California where he currently plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy.

A few weeks ago, we learned that Victoria Beckham had bought her kids a Neiman Marcus treehouse for Christmas, now The Sun reports that David Beckham has bought his wife a book for Christmas. Now a book may not sound like much of a present, especially for Victoria, who, although she has authored a couple of books, famously claimed in 2005 never to have read one, but this is no ordinary book. David bought Victoria Una Grande Storia Italiana - Valentino Garavani, a fabulous new book from Taschen which celebrates the designer. The book comes in a silk-covered clamshell box that is tinted in Valentino red. Inside, the 738-page book includes drawings, magazine shoots, advertisements, portraits of Valentino, and documentary photographs. The text includes Vanity Fair writer Matt Tyrnauer's interviews with twenty of Valentino's collaborators and friends and a tribute to Valentino by fashion writer Suzy Menkes. The Collector's Edition is limited to 2,000 individually numbered copies, each signed by Valentino and sells for $1,000. At least if Victoria doesn't read it she can check out the pretty pictures.

As his football career seems to be winding down, LA Galaxy soccer star David Beckham is lining up sponsorship deals that will ensure he and wife Victoria continue to live the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. His latest endorsement deal is for Armani's Emporio SS08 range of men's underwear. Beckham will be paid $20 million for the three-year deal and has already shot the first billboard campaign. I, for one, am looking forward to the results of that photo shoot, which will appear on billboards and magazines in January.

The rules in major league soccer in the United States state that players are not to travel by private jet so as to not seem different from the fans. That just wouldn't do for superstar David Beckham. The LA Galaxy got a special dispensation to fly Becks and the squad via private jet because Beckham is so mobbed by fans and there are security concerns. I wonder how the rest of the team feels about the special treatment. It probably doesn't do wonders for the team's reputation around the rest of the league.

How much would you spend on a wedding if money were no object? For most celebrities it isn't, and the result is wedding costs skyrocketing into the hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. Forbes recently compiled a list of the 20 most expensive celebrity weddings, going back as far as 20 years. Whether paying for 50,000 exotic flowers or renting an entire island to escape the paparazzi, celebrities spare no expense when it comes to having exactly what they want. The top 5 spenders, in order, are:

• Liza Minelli and David Gest: $3.5 million
• Paul McCartney and Heather MIlls: $3 million
  
• Elizabeth Hurley and Arun Nayar: $2.5 million
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes: $2 million
• Elizabeth Taylor and Larry Fortensky: $2 million

Others on the list of 20 include David and Victoria Beckham, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, and of course Donald Trump and Melania Knauss.

Sadly, 40% of the couples on the list are now divorced (including obviously Brad and Jennifer above), so feel free to check out this list of the most expensive celebrity divorces -- a few made both lists!

In Los Angeles, they covered the arrival of David and Victoria Beckham as if true royalty had finally arrived in Los Angeles. The Beckhams already secured their Beverly Hills mansion, now all they needed were the wheels. The expert Beckham watchers over at Splash News caught the arrival of Victoria's new 2007 Bentley Continental GTC DUB edition, supposedly a gift from the Beckhams' personal one-man Wecome Wagon, Tom Cruise, who also gave Posh and Becks a custom Cadillac Escalade and Lincoln Navigator (presumably David gets to drive one of those). The kickingest detail about Mrs. B's custom ride are the elegantly monogrammed rims and headrests (click over to Splash News for an up close pic). At least this way she won't accidentally get into the wrong Bentley when she's shopping at The Grove.

David and Victoria Beckham are planning to launch a new fragrance together, called "Intimately." The pair worked closely, selecting scents and packaging for the complimentary his-and-hers perfumes. Posh chose a pink and silver theme for her scent, while David went for a more masculine brown color. He already has a best selling after shave, Instinct, so it seems that the new fragrances are already on the road to success with many current users eager to try the new line. Not one to be left behind, Posh will soon add her own line of cosmetics and beauty products to her name, too.

I love a good ghost story. It's even better when it involves our favorite paragons of excess, the Beckhams. Apparently Posh and Becks are ditching their French country estate because it is haunted.  The Daily Mail reports that the Beckhams bought Domaine Saint-Vincent for£1.5 million for the property in 2003 but have never spent a night in the home. Rumor has it that the  ghost of Leslie Duck, a diplomat who took his own life in 2001, haunts the home. His ghost has been seen rambling around the area. The Beckhams didn't know about the ghost before they bought the house. The estate includes two separate buildings: a manor house with four bedrooms and a  four-bedroom barn conversion. No word yet on what the asking price is.

Victoria Beckham is hosting a huge auction at her pre-World Cup, "Full Length and Fabulous" party on May 21.   She has managed to get together over £2 million of luxury items for the sale, the profits from which will all be donated to Unicef. The items up for sale include a £1million diamond necklace from Asprey, his-and-her diamond-encrusted watches from Jacob & Co., valued at £600,000, and a £300,000 limited edition Bentley.

The bash will be hosted at the Beckhams home, dubbed Beckingham Palace. James Brown and Robbie Williams are performing for the 400 A-list guests, while top chef Gordon Ramsey will be doing the cooking. The guest list includes Prince Charles, Elton John, Liz Hurley, Tom Cruise and, of course, the rest of the English World Cup football team.

After having his armored BMW X5 stolen while eating lunch with his sons, David Beckham was offered a free Audi Q7 by Audi, which is the official sponsor of Beckham’s football team, Real Madrid. The car is his for the next year with only one caveat: Beckham has to drive it to training every day.

The Q7 is loaded with every extra that the company offers, making it worth around £70,000. It is a 4.2FSI in phantom black with pearl-effect paintwork and matching black leather interior. It is equipped with a car phone, flat screen television, Bose stereo, satellite navigation and a keyless entry and starting system. The first thing Beckham did with his new car was take it to the track – a challenging, professionally built track near the Real Madrid training grounds, where he tested its maneuverability and 154mph speed under the eyes of professional drivers.