SortStack #1949 — 2031-10-10
By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.
- 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.
- 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.
- A new hardcover bestseller $30
Hardcovers exist partly as price discrimination: publishers sell to eager fans at a premium first, then release the cheaper paperback a year later.
- A round-trip economy flight from New York to London $700
In 1939, a one-way transatlantic ticket on Pan Am's flying boat cost $375 — several months of an average American salary at the time.
- A whole wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese $1.3K
Italian banks accept Parmigiano wheels as loan collateral — one regional bank keeps hundreds of thousands of wheels aging in climate-controlled vaults.
- 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.