SortStack #1648 — 2030-12-13

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A single sheet of printer paper $0.01

   A standard 500-sheet ream costs about five dollars — and the average office worker prints roughly 10,000 sheets a year.

2. An average US movie theater ticket $11

   Theaters keep little of this — studios take most of the box office, which is why a bucket of popcorn can cost nearly as much as the seat.

3. The average used car in the United States $27.5K

   During the pandemic chip shortage, some lightly used cars briefly sold for more than their brand-new equivalents — dealers couldn't get new stock.

4. The Louisiana Purchase, as the US paid France $15M

   The 1803 nominal price bought about 2.1 million square kilometers — roughly three cents per acre — and doubled the size of the United States overnight.

5. 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.

6. The entire Apollo Moon program, in the dollars of its day $25.4B

   At its peak, Apollo employed about 400,000 people and consumed more than 4% of the US federal budget — per landing, each Moon mission cost less than a modern aircraft carrier.

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