SortStack #248 — 2027-02-12

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A single sheet of printer paper $0.01

   A standard 500-sheet ream costs about five dollars — and the average office worker prints roughly 10,000 sheets a year.

2. A pair of Apple AirPods Pro $249

   AirPods alone generate more revenue than Spotify, Twitter, and Shopify each did when analysts ran the comparison — earbuds as a Fortune 500-scale business.

3. An iPhone Pro at launch $999

   The components inside an iPhone cost Apple roughly half the sticker price — the rest covers R&D, software, marketing, and famously healthy margins.

4. A Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup $63K

   The F-150 has been America's best-selling vehicle for over four decades — Ford sells one roughly every minute of every day.

5. A Steinway Model D concert grand piano $200K

   Each Model D takes about a year to build and contains over 12,000 parts. Most major concert halls keep several, tuned before every performance.

6. Activision Blizzard, when Microsoft bought it $68.7B

   The biggest gaming acquisition ever took nearly two years to close as regulators on three continents scrutinized it — the UK initially blocked it outright.

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