SortStack #2649 — 2033-09-09

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. An average US movie theater ticket $11

   Theaters keep little of this — studios take most of the box office, which is why a bucket of popcorn can cost nearly as much as the seat.

2. A PlayStation 5 console $500

   The PS5 sold out so fast at launch during the pandemic that scalper bots became a news story — resale prices briefly doubled the sticker.

3. An iPhone Pro at launch $999

   The components inside an iPhone cost Apple roughly half the sticker price — the rest covers R&D, software, marketing, and famously healthy margins.

4. 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.

5. The High Roller, the giant observation wheel in Las Vegas $550M

   It edged out the London Eye and Singapore Flyer as the world's tallest observation wheel when it opened — one rotation takes half an hour.

6. The Sochi Winter Olympics, the most expensive Games ever held $51B

   The 2014 Winter Games cost more than every previous Winter Olympics combined — a subtropical beach resort had to be re-engineered for snow sports.

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