SortStack #2166 — 2032-05-14

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. A grande latte at Starbucks $4.50

   The coffee beans in a latte cost the chain well under fifty cents — milk, labor, and rent make up most of what you pay.

3. A new hot-air balloon with basket and burner $40K

   The envelope fabric slowly degrades with UV exposure — most balloons retire after a few hundred flight hours, making cost per flight surprisingly high.

4. One B-2 Spirit stealth bomber $737M

   Each B-2 must be kept in climate-controlled hangars to protect its radar-absorbing skin. Only 21 were ever built, each with its own name like 'Spirit of Missouri.'

5. Constructing the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building $1.5B

   It was renamed at the last minute for the president of Abu Dhabi, whose emirate bailed out Dubai during the 2009 debt crisis — it was to be called Burj Dubai.

6. The International Space Station $150B

   Often called the most expensive object ever built, the ISS has been continuously inhabited since the year 2000 and orbits Earth about sixteen times a day.

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