SortStack #3489 — 2035-12-28

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 Dyson Airwrap hair styler $600

   Dyson spent about 100 million pounds developing the Airwrap, using the same tiny high-speed motor technology as its vacuums.

3. 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.

4. The average used car in the United States $27.5K

   During the pandemic chip shortage, some lightly used cars briefly sold for more than their brand-new equivalents — dealers couldn't get new stock.

5. The Pink Star diamond, sold at auction in Hong Kong $71.2M

   A previous buyer defaulted after bidding $83 million, forcing a re-auction — the 59.6 carat stone took two years just to cut and polish.

6. Building the US Interstate Highway System, in the dollars of its day $114B

   Championed by Eisenhower after he saw Germany's autobahns, the system took 35 years to declare complete — the original estimate was a fraction of the final bill.

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