SortStack #1501 — 2030-07-19

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. 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.

2. A dozen red roses from a florist $55

   Most US roses are flown in from Colombia and Ecuador — around Valentine's Day, cargo jets full of nothing but flowers land in Miami daily.

3. 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.

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. WhatsApp, when Facebook bought it $19B

   At the 2014 acquisition, WhatsApp had about 55 employees serving 450 million users — a price of roughly $350 million per employee.

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