SortStack #1438 — 2030-05-17

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. An Oscar statuette, if a winner ever sells it back to the Academy $1.00

   Since 1951, winners must offer their Oscar back to the Academy for exactly one dollar before selling it elsewhere — a rule that keeps statuettes off the open market.

2. 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.

3. 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.

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. One F-35A stealth fighter jet $82.5M

   The pilot's helmet alone costs about $400,000 — it lets the pilot effectively see through the aircraft via cameras mounted around the fuselage.

6. 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.

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