I dunno, I think it's a relatively normal item. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for owning one, whether you are a professional dancer, a club owner, a party planner, someone who rents it out to said people, etc. There are also tons of women who take pole-dancing classes for exercise, although they usually get fairly basic poles. I think the only outstanding thing about this is that it costs so much money. If you take a look around Google, you can easily find brand new setups that look much nicer than this going for $500 or less. My guess is that they're either lying about how much they paid or this pole is as old as it looks and it was bought when these weren't so common.