SortStack #3174 — 2035-02-16

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. Manhattan Island, as the Dutch paid for it (in goods, at the famous valuation) $24

   The Dutch paid 60 guilders in trade goods in 1626 — a sum 19th-century historians famously converted to about $24. Manhattan real estate is now worth well over a trillion.

3. Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise, when Disney bought them $4.1B

   George Lucas took much of the 2012 payment in Disney stock and has donated billions toward education — Disney recouped the price within a few films.

4. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy's newest aircraft carrier $13B

   It launches jets with electromagnetic catapults instead of steam, and its two reactors are designed to run 25 years without refueling.

5. 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.

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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