# Most Valuable Substances on Earth **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 20, 2009, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259 "2009-11-20T05:18:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/21 "2009-11-20T18:06:26Z")
Dan Savage wrote a book about adopting a kid. After adding up all the costs and fees and hassle, he wanted to title the book “$238 an ounce” or some such. The publishers talked him out of it, and the book was titled “The Kid”. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/22 "2009-11-20T18:14:33Z")
This author was a bit more candid: [http://www.amazon.com/64-Tomato-Fortune-Endured-Existential/dp/B002PJ4IW0/ref=sr\_1\_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258740830&sr=1-4](http://www.amazon.com/64-Tomato-Fortune-Endured-Existential/dp/B002PJ4IW0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258740830&sr=1-4) ---
**Author:** ![badlyburnttoast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ad7895/32.png) [@badlyburnttoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badlyburnttoast)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/23 "2009-11-20T18:49:03Z")
> [@bouv](#): > > Ummm…I’m not sure if this is your math or just from the website(s) you got the numbers from, but something’s not right here. > > Heroin, at $88/gram, would equal $88,000/kilogram, over four times as much as Cocaine, and yet…ther per pound is $4000 less? The actual amount is $193,600 per pound…unless the $40,000 per pound is the right number, in which case the heroin is ~$18/gram…which can’t possibly be right. I mean, I don’t know a lot about drugs, but that seems _damn_ low for a drug that’s pretty risky to get/make. > > And if MDMA is $100/gram (MDMA is ectasy, right? If so, then that sounds right, since a friend bragged to me that he got a pill for only $20 the other week, and it was probably a couple hundred mg, yes?) then it would be $220,000/pound. > > This whole thread gets very confusing to follow when people are freely switching between metric and US units, and posting bad conversions. So let’s all just stick to metric from here on out. It’s the superior system, and well all know it. 😛 **Sofis** is right, it’s $20,000 per kilogram = $9000 per pound. I multiplied by two when I should have divided by two (in my defense, I was writing that at 2 am and I should have been in bed). That does seem low, and maybe it’s wrong - I have no idea how accurate the data was but I did check multiple sites per drug and picked a number they all seemed to agree on. The first number is the original (from random websites). The pounds I converted for comparison (and why I chose pounds, I don’t know, metric IS superior even if the French did invent it). ---
**Author:** ![moldybread](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@moldybread](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moldybread)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/24 "2009-11-20T19:03:22Z")
Also remember with illegal drugs you dont actually pay the per gram price when you buy larger quantities. The friendly neighborhood drug dealers see fit to give us a discount. Possibly because of the risk of having a pound as compared to a gram. A friend of my friend told me this. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/25 "2009-11-20T21:05:50Z")
And all this time I thought it was printer ink… ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/26 "2009-11-21T02:23:59Z")
> [@pancakes3](#): > > however, it would be interesting to compare an ounce of rare earth element vs a faberge egg. Well, in that line I noticed this while surfing Wikipedia about [moon rocks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock): > [@](#): > > Agents were targeting individuals selling bogus moon rocks, but what they received was a solicitation to buy what turned out to be a gift President Richard Nixon gave to the people of Honduras in 1973, the Honduras Goodwill Moon Rock, one of 135 Apollo 17 moon rocks given to the nations of the world. The seller of this moon rock offered it to the undercover Agents **for 5 million dollars, a huge amount for something that weighed only 1.142 grams**. That’s pretty expensive for what when you get right down to it is a fleck of rock with sentimental value. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/27 "2009-11-21T02:26:36Z")
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide has a street value of $ 100,000 per gram. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/28 "2009-11-21T02:31:36Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Well if you’re doing illegal drugs 300 micrograms of LSD street price is approx $15. > > so 1 gram = $50,000 and 1 Kilo = $50 Million dollars… LOL beat me to it, though if you are getting 300mics of LSD for 15 you're getting a pretty good deal. Generally around 100 mics for 10 bucks is what I see average or 300 for 20 unless you get higher concentration stuff. But I think standard for one hit of blotter is 100 mics. Obviously it is such an insanely profitable chemical at every point in the chain it’s very easy to get it much cheaper if you buy in bulk. Buy 5000 hits of Acid or 50 sheets and you can get it for around $ 250-300 a piece with a high variable quality because of the nature of the solution and the paper you soak it up with. I think delivery amounts are generally fairly imprecise at the consumer level. At my price it’s about 45m per pound at yours yea 50m per kilo. So far, only antimatter seems to be beating out LSD. Of course, I have possessed LSD and can easily access its market, antimatter I wouldn’t even know who to buy it from. ---
**Author:** ![CutterJohn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@CutterJohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CutterJohn)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/29 "2009-11-21T13:20:21Z")
Is it really fair to count street value though? Street value is grossly inflated due to the artificial rarity of a substance, not really due to any real difficulty in manufacture. Cocaine, for instance, would be priced similar to most other processed agricultural products if it were to be bought near the source or in a place without laws against it, and LSD surely cannot cost anywhere close to what its grossly inflated street value is. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/30 "2009-11-21T18:30:54Z")
Graphene has to be up there too, my understanding is that it would cost several billion dollars to produce a one-inch square piece of it. I’m not sure what the weight would be, but it’s pure carbon in a layer one atom thick, so it’s well below a gram in any case. ---
**Author:** ![Vihaga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Vihaga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vihaga)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/31 "2009-11-21T21:01:11Z")
Just checking some things I buy for work, recombinent BMP-15 costs $295 per 5ug, making it $59,000 per gram, and I’m sure there are biological reagents more expensive than that; I just randomly picked one of the growth factor vendors. So, I bet if you could find a patented, particularly difficult to manufacture recombinant protein, you could find one that was more expensive than that. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/32 "2009-11-21T21:13:27Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Well, in that line I noticed this while surfing Wikipedia about [moon rocks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock): > > That’s pretty expensive for what when you get right down to it is a fleck of rock with sentimental value. Yes and no. How many billions if not trillions did we spend to send men to the moon ? How many pounds of rock did we bring back ? A couple billion per pound might be on the low side cost wise. Of course, now given the Russians desperation for cash and their space faring abilities, its kinda suprising to me they havent sent a robotic probe to gather a few pounds of lunar rock and then auction it off a few slivers at a time. Yeah, there is a whole moons worth right next door, but very little has been brought back and it cost a fortune to go get it. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/33 "2009-11-21T21:29:23Z")
> [@CutterJohn](#): > > Is it really fair to count street value though? Street value is grossly inflated due to the artificial rarity of a substance, not really due to any real difficulty in manufacture. Cocaine, for instance, would be priced similar to most other processed agricultural products if it were to be bought near the source or in a place without laws against it, and LSD surely cannot cost anywhere close to what its grossly inflated street value is. Fair point, but even still, LSD is probably a very expensive chemical outside of that artificial inflation. A pound of LSD could dose every hippy in North America. It’s just not produced in those quantities, even if you look at it from the perspective of the chemist directly to his immediate broker, where the price is probably much much less than it’s end-user value, it’s still an expensive commodity because they aren’t making pounds of it at a time and it’s unlikely that given different legal circumstances that they would make pounds of it at a time. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/34 "2009-11-21T22:09:34Z")
It might not be fair to count things that aren’t available as commodities. Do winning lottery tickets count? If you argue that it’s the ink in their numbers that makes the difference, does that count? What if adding a line segment to turn a 5 into a 6 makes it a winner - does one segment’s worth of ink count? What if erasing a line segment does it - does that mean the ink has an enormous negative value? ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/35 "2009-11-21T23:00:12Z")
> [@tanstaafl](#): > > And all this time I thought it was printer ink… I just read an article in a computer magazine where they said that per liter, printer ink costs far more than either the most expensive champagne or expensive perfume, which costs tens of thousands of dollars/ Euros already. So while not the most expensive, it deserves a mention… ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/36 "2009-11-22T00:14:08Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > It might not be fair to count things that aren’t available as commodities. Do winning lottery tickets count? If you argue that it’s the ink in their numbers that makes the difference, does that count? What if adding a line segment to turn a 5 into a 6 makes it a winner - does one segment’s worth of ink count? What if erasing a line segment does it - does that mean the ink has an enormous negative value? Well I thought we were talking about substances. Like LSD isn’t really available as a commodity but it IS a molecule. I mean as a commodity in the legal commodities market, I guess it is a black market commodity. Would LSD fall in or out of this thread’s purview based on your definition? ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/37 "2009-11-22T01:20:44Z")
The most valuable substance on Earth? That would be my son. He’s priceless.😃 However, I hear some scientist named Lex Luthor is willing to pay top dollar for something called _kryptonite_. ---
**Author:** ![Laudenum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Laudenum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laudenum)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/38 "2009-11-22T01:55:42Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > From [Geoffrey Miller’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_(evolutionary_psychologist)) _Spent_: diamonds are $1.25M per pound, while LSD is $30M/lb and a **human egg is $4.5 TRILLION/lb.** > > Compare that to a laptop at $204/lb, a car at $7/lb, and a house for $2/lb. 😕 Then how is IVF affordable? 4.5 trillion per pound (I know an egg weighs less, but still). ---
**Author:** ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/39 "2009-11-22T07:28:21Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > > [@Napier](#): > > > > It might not be fair to count things that aren’t available as commodities. Do winning lottery tickets count? If you argue that it’s the ink in their numbers that makes the difference, does that count? What if adding a line segment to turn a 5 into a 6 makes it a winner - does one segment’s worth of ink count? What if erasing a line segment does it - does that mean the ink has an enormous negative value? > > Well I thought we were talking about substances. Like LSD isn’t really available as a commodity but it IS a molecule. I mean as a commodity in the legal commodities market, I guess it is a black market commodity. Would LSD fall in or out of this thread’s purview based on your definition? I am not the OP, but I am going to suggest a definition of commodities for this thread anyway. Specifically, one based on divisibility: Take the substance in an amount it would normally be sold in. Divide it into two equal halves. If the halves are each worth approximately half of what the original amount was worth, it is a commodity. If there is a significant difference in value between the two halves, or the total value is significantly different from the original value, it is not a commodity. That would mean LSD is in, while diamonds, human eggs and winning lottery tickets are all out. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2009, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259/40 "2009-11-22T07:54:33Z")
> [@CutterJohn](#): > > Is it really fair to count street value though? Street value is grossly inflated due to the artificial rarity of a substance, not really due to any real difficulty in manufacture. Cocaine, for instance, would be priced similar to most other processed agricultural products if it were to be bought near the source or in a place without laws against it, and LSD surely cannot cost anywhere close to what its grossly inflated street value is. Yes fair enough, manufacturing price is probably only couple hundred dollars per litre if you had full access to all the needed precursors. Isn’t LSD legal in switzerland for psychiatric research? Anyone know how to find out the cost of the legal variety? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-valuable-substances-on-earth/518259.md?page=3)