SortStack #2264 — 2032-08-20
By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.
- 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.
- A Nintendo Switch Lite console $199
Nintendo has a history of durable hardware: the original Game Boy survived a Gulf War bombing and still works, on display at Nintendo New York.
- 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.
- 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.
- One F-35A stealth fighter jet $82.5M
The pilot's helmet alone costs about $400,000 — it lets the pilot effectively see through the aircraft via cameras mounted around the fuselage.
- 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.