SortStack #591 — 2028-01-21

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A banana at a US grocery store $0.25

   Nearly all export bananas are one variety, the Cavendish — adopted after a fungus wiped out its tastier predecessor, the Gros Michel.

2. A grande latte at Starbucks $4.50

   The coffee beans in a latte cost the chain well under fifty cents — milk, labor, and rent make up most of what you pay.

3. Dennis Tito's trip to the International Space Station as the first space tourist $20M

   NASA objected so strongly to the 2001 visit that Tito trained in Russia and flew on a Soyuz — NASA staff were initially told not to assist him.

4. The Oppenheimer Blue, the largest fancy vivid blue diamond ever auctioned $57.5M

   Blue diamonds owe their color to traces of boron and form deeper in the Earth than almost any other gem — only a handful surface each year.

5. The Pink Star diamond, sold at auction in Hong Kong $71.2M

   A previous buyer defaulted after bidding $83 million, forcing a re-auction — the 59.6 carat stone took two years just to cut and polish.

6. Building the US Interstate Highway System, in the dollars of its day $114B

   Championed by Eisenhower after he saw Germany's autobahns, the system took 35 years to declare complete — the original estimate was a fraction of the final bill.

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