SortStack #2194 — 2032-06-11

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A single steel paperclip $0.02

   Norwegians wore paperclips on their lapels during WWII as a quiet symbol of resistance against the Nazi occupation.

2. One standard LEGO brick, on average $0.10

   LEGO bricks are molded to a tolerance of four thousandths of a millimeter — and bricks made in 1958 still click with bricks made today.

3. 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.

4. An Xbox Series S console $349

   Microsoft has long sold consoles near or below manufacturing cost, betting on game sales and subscriptions to make the profit.

5. A McLaren F1 supercar at its original Nineties sticker price $815K

   The engine bay was lined with real gold foil for heat reflection. The same cars now trade for over $20 million — among history's best car investments.

6. Building the Large Hadron Collider at CERN $4.8B

   The LHC's 27 km ring is colder than outer space — its magnets sit at 1.9 kelvin — and it briefly held a section of the emptiest vacuum in the solar system.

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