What's the most expensive thing ever bought?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Peter Morris

It’s true that you have to pay people along the way for their work. You have to pay an architect to design the house, and pay for building supplies, and pay for people to do the actual building. But that involves numerous individual acts of purchasing. You are buying a lot of different things from different people at different times. It is not the same as buying a house as a single thing.

Not necessarily.

You may simply give your money to a broker or agent who does all the individual purchasing and then sells you the finished article.

[Inigo_Montoya]

Château de Versailles cost, by some estimates, $300 billion (in today’s dollars).

Louis XIV had it built, I guess you could say that France was his, so as it belonged to France, it belonged to Louis. And he would have been far enough removed from the actual project of construction that I’d say he gets around the problem of having made a bunch of little purchases in order to obtain one Château de Versailles.

[Ravenman]

@Peter Morris

“Buying” implies that an object was at one time owned by entity A, then at a later time ownership was transferred to entity B in exchange for money. An entity might be a human being, a government or a corporation, for instance.

I can’t find a thing in any online dictionary to support an implication that “buying” has anything to do with prior ownership.

I think you should provide a citation to support your statement.

[msmith537]

You can buy a private Airbus 380 for a mere $300 million.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17536837/

[kdeus]

Once you realize that cost /= money, then you’ll have the answer to the OP:

A spouse. Or, more accurately, a first spouse.

Tank yew. Tank yew very much.