Rather than hijack this thread, about the most expensive substance known to man (answer: Californium 252 or something), I’ll start a new thread.
What is the most expensive substance that I, yer average Joe, can buy? I am a man with no credentials or anything like that. I do not work for a physics lab, government munitions plant, yada yada yada. Assuming the only requirement for me to be allowed to by X Substance is the ability to cover the check, then what’s the most expensive thing I can buy?
I think Rhino horn might take the cake. I think you can still buy it in Japan but it is very rare and hard to come by. The link below says a single Rhino horn costs about $1 million.
http://community-2.webtv.net/Hahn-50thAP-K9/K9History26/
Saffron is also quite expensive per weight but I don’t know how it measures up.
Ambergris is also quite expensive (comes from Sperm Whales) although I don’t know if that is still sold today or not.
Dried snake venom. 800 times (or is that 80 times) more expensive than gold.
[ul]
[sup]A gallon of gasoline[/sup][/ul]
So where does the “average joe” go to buy dried snake venom? I can’t find it on eBay.
Tritium, the glow in the dark radioactive stuff used in some gun sights is up there.
Snake Venom doesn’t look to be terribly expensive.
It might be a good idea to further limit the OP, maybe restrict it to a natural substance and say you need 1 lb or 1 kg of the substance.
The most expensive thing you can buy is slightly different. I’d imagine, if you had a enough money, you could buy, for example, all the property in New York, less the governmental properties, which would run quite a bit of money.
Saffron really very, very cheap here. Especially the lower grade stuff.
IIRC, the last time I saw saffron in the store the price was about $250/oz, although the package only contained a couple of grams.
Rare stamps are often quoted as an extremely pricey substance by weight. There is supposedly a very rare Hawaiian stamp printed on very lightweight rice paper, and if you figure the price per pound it is well in the multibillions.
Cocaine?
The Green - here my brother was able to get a big fat bag of it (think the volume of a half kilo bag of sugar, obviously weighing less though) for thirty dirhams. That’s about eight dollars. However this was cheap lowgrade saffron, for “cooking” - eg biryanis and stuff - not for coffee, which is another thing they use it for.
The active ingredient in some antibiotic pharmaceuticals has got to pretty expensive considering that some pills/capsules cost $ 10- $20 each and only contain a few micrograms of active ingredient. I would imagine this woud translate to hundreds to thousands of dollars per gram of active ingredient in some cases.
It would but the price of those pills is artificially set by the patent (temporary monopoly) holder. That very same pill may cost a $1 in Africa for instance…they set the price at what they think they can get away with. The price also reflects the cost of research and advertising and recouping lost money on a half-dozen failed formulas. Watch what happens to the price when the patent runs out and competitors are allowed in. My point is that I do not think the price of pharmaceuticals really reflects the actual cost of the product as it would be on an open market and is far cheaper than the price suggests.
Diamonds are pretty expensive, and lots of average Joes buy them for average Doreens.
“I’ve got an idea, sweetheart! Let’s start out our financial life together by blowing two months’ pay on an overpriced trinket. That will impress your parents with my maturity!”
“Oh, yes, let’s! You are so sweet.”
Er, sorry about the sarcasm I dripped on your monitor. A little club soda will wipe that right off.
I’m taking a hormone that costs $570 for 560 micrograms of useable active ingredient, for a little over $1M per gram.
I think you mean radium. Tritum is heavy hydrogen with two neutrons in the nucleus. Secondly, no radioactive substance visibly glows on its own. Radium watch dials and the like glow because there is a fluorescent pigment mixed in with the radium that glows when excited by the radiation.
Hmmm. A little research says it is tritium. Nevertheless, the rest of my post stands, it’s not the tritium itself glowing, it’s the fluorescent phosphors mixed with it.
I have a tritium keychain, which, assuming my calculations are correct, cost about $190,000/gm of tritium.
IIRC, saffron is the most expensive food, not substance. (While there are some insanely expensive wines out there, I think saffron comes out pricier by the pound.) Most yellow rice packets I find use tumeric instead.