What’s the most expensive thing in the world? A few hours of Googling gave a few interesting insights.
Here’s my countdown of the most expensive things money can buy (cost per g) starting with a few things at the cheap end for context and ending in the Top Ten:
Land – 0.0021p per Tonne – I thought this might come a bit higher but apparently land ownership extends all the way to the center of the planet! Who knew?
Tap Water – £1.46 per Tonne – Another surprise water is quite cheap, mainly as a cubic meter weighs a fair bit. (Prices from Anglian water.)
Cadbury Dairy Milk – 0.91p /g
Petrol – 18p /g – Calculated when it was 137.44p /litre.
Ivory – £1.23 /g – Price in Jul/2014 according to the Guardian newspaper.
An iPhone 6 – £6.12 /g – Anyone thinking of getting their next iPhone with an ivory case to bring the price down a bit?
Safron – £7.12 /g
Romanee-Conti Burgundy – £12.17 /g – A “record breaking” HK$12,556,250 for 114 bottles.
Ambergris – £15.8 /g – Aka whale barf; used in perfume making! – man in Morecambe found a 2.7kg lump on a beach which he was offered £43,000 by a dealer. Next time you’re on a beach look out for funny smelling rocks.
Henri Jayer Richebourg; Vintage : 1985 Red wine – £16.16 /g – Roughly the same per ml!
Iranian Beluga Caviar – £22.4 /g
Gold – £24.32 /g – Not even close to the medal for 1st place.
White Truffle – £24.96 /g – Based on sale in July 2014 of a 1.89Kg truffle bought for $73,600!
Platinum – £30.72 /g
Rhino Horn – £35.20 /g – Just thinking what rhinos would look like with gold horns instead. Makes you think how the poachers must see them but and that’s at 2/3 the value.
Methamphetamine – £76.8 /g – Anyone know a good chemist…
Lego Mr Gold – £140 /g – Worth about six times more than if it was made of real gold. Only £1,400 (http://goo.gl/WSmDY5).
1962 Ferrari 250 GTO – £252 /g – Bought at Bonhams acution for $34.65 million weighing just 880kg.
Crack Cocaine – £384 /g – Anyone know a really good chemist…
No. 10) Scarlett Johansson’s Used Tissue – £976 /g – Some ‘fan’ paid $5,300 for this.
No. 9) Plutonium – £2.56k /g
No. 8) Lock of Elvis’ Hair – £96.6k /g – Bought at auction for £115k in 2002.
No. 7) Painite – £192k /g – Most expensive mineral.
No. 6) Moon Rock/Dust – £252k /g – $25 billion on the Apollo space program which bought back 382kg of rock.
No. 5) The Mona Lisa – £554k /g
No. 4) Electricity – £2.5million /g – Assuming I’ve worked this out correctly using the mater-energy equivalency of E=MC^2.
No. 3) Californium 252 – £17.28million /g
No. 2) The British Guiana One-Cent Black on Magenta – £152million /g – Sold for $9.5m and weighing at my guest about 0.06g.
No. 1) Antimater – £640 BILLION /g – You literally can’t touch it!
Honnorable Mentions –
There are 12 bottles of Scotch whiskey on Harrods website for a gnats whisker off £1million. I couldn’t find the weight of the bottles and they had real silver adornments. Sure they would dwarf the wines mentioned even so.
Tiger Penis – At around $1,300 per dried specimen it’s quite pricy and really wanted to include it but unfortunately Google let me down on the average weight of a dried tiger penis! Anyone have that info to hand…
Quite a few prices from this page – http://uk.businessinsider.com/most-valuable-substances-by-w…