SortStack #1179 — 2029-08-31

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A plain slice of pizza in New York City $3.00

   The 'Pizza Principle' holds that a NYC slice and a subway ride have cost roughly the same for decades — when one rises, the other tends to follow.

2. The median home in San Francisco $1.3M

   San Francisco is only about 121 square kilometers — smaller than Walt Disney World in Florida — which helps explain the brutal housing math.

3. Alaska, as the United States paid Russia for it $7.2M

   The 1867 nominal price worked out to about two cents per acre. Critics called it 'Seward's Folly' — then gold and oil turned it into history's great bargain.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. The Sochi Winter Olympics, the most expensive Games ever held $51B

   The 2014 Winter Games cost more than every previous Winter Olympics combined — a subtropical beach resort had to be re-engineered for snow sports.

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