SortStack #178 — 2026-12-04

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A single supermarket tea bag $0.05

   Tea bags were popularized by accident: a New York merchant shipped samples in silk pouches, and customers dunked the whole pouch.

2. A new hardcover bestseller $30

   Hardcovers exist partly as price discrimination: publishers sell to eager fans at a premium first, then release the cheaper paperback a year later.

3. An Instant Pot pressure cooker $90

   The Instant Pot was invented by a laid-off Canadian telecom engineer — it became so beloved that owners formed recipe communities millions strong.

4. A round-trip economy flight from New York to London $700

   In 1939, a one-way transatlantic ticket on Pan Am's flying boat cost $375 — several months of an average American salary at the time.

5. New Kim, the world's most expensive racing pigeon $1.9M

   A Chinese buyer won the 2020 auction for the Belgian hen. Pigeon racing's huge prize purses in China have turned top breeding birds into seven-figure assets.

6. Building the Large Hadron Collider at CERN $4.8B

   The LHC's 27 km ring is colder than outer space — its magnets sit at 1.9 kelvin — and it briefly held a section of the emptiest vacuum in the solar system.

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