It seems to me that a state-of-the-art passenger jet is the obvious answer. A private individual actually could buy a 787 Dreamliner or an Airbus 380; they’d be happy to slot your order into the production queue. The price would be extraordinary.
That’s my guess as well for something anyone could actually order given the money. You would be looking at about $300 million for an Airbus 380 and I am sure they would customize it for an individual owner for 10’s of millions more. You might be able to place a regular order for a $400 million dollar plane ready to go off the assembly line with an AirForce 1 type configuration given bedrooms and luxurious space for all others Operating costs would be mind-boggling as well but that isn’t part of the question.
That is the best answer to the question that I know. You could call an Airbus salesperson and start the real process in motion right away with a check upfront although it might take a year or more to get your plane.
HCA Inc (it’s a corporation that owns hospitals) was bought by a consortium of three other corporations in 2006 for $33,000,000,000. That’s probably the biggest price ever actually paid for something by any private purchaser.
Dang, and here I have a bunch of that stuff collecting dust in my attic and thought it was worthless. Who knew?
Under those criteria, would you accept a trip to Mars ? If you had the money,you could theoretically ring an aerospace company and say you want to fly to Mars ASAP, please make the necessary arrangements.
If you wrote them a big enough deposit cheque, they’d get working immediately, or at least as soon as other commitments allowed. It might take decades for your “purchase” to be available, but it is something you’ve initiated by simply picking up a phone. Likely cost, according to the first Google result, is 3-6 billion dollars, and that’s a “cut-price” Russian venture.
Yeah, but the best parts are free.
It costs $63,000,000,000 billion.
Assuming you could get the necessary approvals, how about a fully-equipped Nimitz class aircraft carrier?
Are there any known privately held planes of this size? If not, I’d nominate something like Paul Allen’s yacht.
When it absolutley doesn’t have to be there on time.
Seems likely he’s upgrading to an Airbus 380. Someone has ordered a private 380 … he’s surely the most likely candidate.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117158777313610548-fIv4XHmaEh9H4s_CIKek5PHCQmw_20070318.html
If that WSJ article is correct, the Sultan of Brunei is definitely not the one buying the A380, as the article said that the buyer is from the Middle East.
In this sort of category, wouldn’t a regular old cruise ship be a lot more expensive?
It meets criteria of purchasability to any private individual with the dough and a concrete price tag.
1.2 Billion+ USD, e.g.
Of course, a private owner may want extras…
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/06/ap/business/mainD8FJQAOO1.shtml
In the same way a private jet owner wants to step up to an airliner, a yacht owner could step up to a cruise ship–it’s just that they are too expensive.
My pencil here will cost you several billion trillion to buy. As the owner of it, I may set the price as anything I like, and so it is the most expensive thing in the world. As of now, anyway.
In general the most expensive purchasable thing would be land/real estate…just depends on how much you want.
In theory, New York is for sale, etc.
I’m guessing I can get you down to $100 right now with nothing more than a Bennie in the mail to your address…
That’s a fraction above market value for a pencil IMO.
This is more of a collateral answer than an on-point answer, but I did hear once that black widow venom is the most expensive liquid in the world. When I heard this, which I think was in the late 80s, the price quoted was something like $400,000 per ounce. As with most things, I’d bet the price has gone up; there’s no cheaper substitute, and there aren’t any great innovations I know of in the field of spider venom milking, which is a labor-intensive procedure that produces very little product.
Ok, sorry for the hijack but this piqued my curiosity.
Are there procedures for properly milking venom from spiders on the net? My Google-Fu is apparently lacking.
I have access to metric shitloads of black widows.