SortStack #3083 — 2034-11-17

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. 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.

2. A new MacBook Pro, base model $1.6K

   Apple's first laptop ancestor, the 1989 Macintosh Portable, weighed over seven kilograms and cost the equivalent of more than $16,000 today.

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. A new Porsche 911 Carrera $120K

   The 911's silhouette has barely changed since 1963 — Porsche claims over 70% of all 911s ever built are still on the road.

5. The Codex Sassoon, the earliest most-complete Hebrew Bible $38.1M

   The roughly 1,100-year-old manuscript sold in 2023 and was donated to a museum in Tel Aviv — it had spent decades in private hands, rarely seen.

6. Instagram, when Facebook bought it $1B

   In 2012 Instagram had 13 employees and zero revenue. The price was widely mocked as insane — it may be the best acquisition in tech history.

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