SortStack #290 — 2027-03-26
By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.
- Manhattan Island, as the Dutch paid for it (in goods, at the famous valuation) $24
The Dutch paid 60 guilders in trade goods in 1626 — a sum 19th-century historians famously converted to about $24. Manhattan real estate is now worth well over a trillion.
- An Xbox Series S console $349
Microsoft has long sold consoles near or below manufacturing cost, betting on game sales and subscriptions to make the profit.
- A new hot-air balloon with basket and burner $40K
The envelope fabric slowly degrades with UV exposure — most balloons retire after a few hundred flight hours, making cost per flight surprisingly high.
- The finest-known Mickey Mantle baseball card from his rookie era $12.6M
The 1952 Topps card sold in 2022 became the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia ever — countless others were dumped in the ocean by Topps in the Fifties.
- Instagram, when Facebook bought it $1B
In 2012 Instagram had 13 employees and zero revenue. The price was widely mocked as insane — it may be the best acquisition in tech history.
- The largest lottery jackpot ever won, a single-ticket Powerball prize $2B
The 2022 winner, a California man, took the lump sum of just under a billion dollars — then made headlines buying multiple mansions.