SortStack #2138 — 2032-04-16

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A single supermarket tea bag $0.05

   Tea bags were popularized by accident: a New York merchant shipped samples in silk pouches, and customers dunked the whole pouch.

2. 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.

3. The cheapest new car sold in America, a Nissan Versa $17K

   The sub-$20,000 new car is nearly extinct in the US — in 2019 there were over a dozen models under that line; now essentially one remains.

4. Paul Newman's own Rolex Daytona, sold at auction $17.8M

   The watch was a gift from his wife, engraved 'Drive Carefully Me.' Its 2017 sale made it the most expensive wristwatch ever auctioned at the time.

5. 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.

6. Mojang, the maker of Minecraft, when Microsoft bought it $2.5B

   Creator Markus 'Notch' Persson sold partly due to burnout, tweeting that he didn't want the responsibility — Minecraft went on to become the best-selling game ever.

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