Think you’ve seen expensive? Think again! From a tiny stamp worth millions to a machine that costs more than a fleet of planes, we’re counting down the wildest, priciest man-made objects ever. Which one blew your mind? Hit that subscribe button for more jaw-dropping lists, and drop a comment sharing your favorite from the video! #expensive #luxury #technology #history #recordbreaking
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@sosialhits
0:05 - Introduction to Expensive Man-Made Objects
0:48 - The British Guiana One Cent Magenta Stamp
2:34 - The 1933 Double Eagle Gold Coin
4:10 - The Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Watch
6:26 - The Apex Stegosaurus Fossil
8:38 - Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe
10:21 - ASML TwinScan Lithography Machine
12:34 - Record-Breaking Art, Aircraft, and the ISS
We're now available on Spotify! Listen now https://open.spotify.com/show/033HmQnBJHECaIgGr4sLD5
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@sosialhits
0:05 - Introduction to Expensive Man-Made Objects
0:48 - The British Guiana One Cent Magenta Stamp
2:34 - The 1933 Double Eagle Gold Coin
4:10 - The Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Watch
6:26 - The Apex Stegosaurus Fossil
8:38 - Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe
10:21 - ASML TwinScan Lithography Machine
12:34 - Record-Breaking Art, Aircraft, and the ISS
We're now available on Spotify! Listen now https://open.spotify.com/show/033HmQnBJHECaIgGr4sLD5
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🎈
FunTranscript
00:04Hey guys, what's the most expensive thing you've ever seen? Maybe a luxury car, a huge house,
00:10or a private jet, but the items on this list are on a completely different level. There are tiny
00:15items you can hold with two fingers, yet they cost millions of dollars. There's also machine
00:21worth as much as several passenger planes, all the way to a gigantic object whose construction costs
00:27could rival dozens of the world's most famous skyscrapers. Here's a list of the most expensive
00:34man-made objects in the world. If you ever find an old stamp in your closet, don't rush to throw
00:51it
00:51away, because you never know, that tiny object might actually be worth an insane amount of money.
00:56Just like this one stamp called the British Guiana One Cent Magenta. This stamp was produced in 1856 in
01:05British Guiana, which is now known as Guyana. Back then, a stamp shipment from Britain was delayed,
01:11so the local post office was forced to print their own stamps as a temporary replacement.
01:17It doesn't actually look that special. It's purplish red with a simple design,
01:23and its size is just a few centimeters. But it was precisely this simple stamp that later became
01:30extraordinary. Because of that one cent magenta stamp, only a single copy is currently known to exist.
01:38It was this rarity that made its price keep soaring. In 2014, this stamp was auctioned off and sold for
01:44around 9.48 million US dollars. With that much money, you could roughly buy nearly 20 supercars worth
01:53$500,000 each. Think! And what is even crazier is that if you compare its price based on its weight
02:02of
02:02just a fraction of a gram, the British Guiana One Cent Magenta was once called one of the most expensive
02:09items in the world by weight. So from a tiny scrap of paper originally meant just for mailing a letter
02:16more than a century and a half later, its value skyrocketed to nearly 10 million US dollars.
02:33While the previous one was just a single stamp, the next item is not much bigger either.
02:39This is the 1933 Double Eagle, an American gold coin with a face value of just $20,
02:45dollars, but now it's worth tens of millions of dollars. The problem was that in the same year,
02:51America was facing a major economic crisis and the government stopped using gold coins as legal tender.
02:59As a result, even though hundreds of thousands of Double Eagles had already been minted,
03:04almost all of them were ordered to be melted down. But as it turned out, a few coins managed to
03:10slip out
03:11of storage, which led the US government to consider those coins state property, spending years trying
03:16to reclaim every Double Eagle that surfaced. Until finally, one coin was officially permitted to be
03:26owned by a collector. And it was this very coin that was later auctioned off again in 2021.
03:35That coin, marked with $20 on its surface, sold for about 18.9 million US dollars, or the equivalent of
03:42nearly 40 supercars worth $500,000 each. It was such an expensive price tag, the Double Eagle coin became
03:51one of the most expensive coins ever sold in the world.
04:10If you had around 31 million US dollars, what do you think you'd buy? A luxury home? Dozens of sports
04:16cars? Or maybe a private island?
04:19If you had around 31 million US dollars, what do you think you'd buy? A luxury home? Dozens of sports
04:24cars? Or maybe a private island?
04:24Well, I've got the biggest watch. This is the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A-010.
04:32One of the most exceptional timepieces ever created by Patek Philippe. At first glance,
04:38it might be hard to believe that this tiny watch could be that expensive, but honestly this is no ordinary
04:43Patek Philippe. The Grandmaster Chime has 20 complications which are various additional mechanical
04:49functions beyond just telling the time, ranging from a calendar, an alarm, to a mechanism that
04:55can chime the time using tiny bells inside the watch. It even features two dials, and the case
05:02can be rotated so the owner can choose which side they want to use. But there's one more thing that
05:09makes this version so much more special. The watch was specially made for the OnlyWatch 2019 charity
05:15auction, crafted with a stainless steel case, and there's only one piece of this reference in the
05:20entire world. When it was finally auctioned, the fierce competition among collectors drove the price
05:29up to 31 million Swiss francs, which was around 31 million US dollars at the time. That massive
05:35amount is roughly equivalent to more than 60 supercars valued at $500,000 each. Just imagine
05:42an object that's even smaller than the palm of your hand, holding a value of over 30 million US dollars.
05:51And what's even crazier is that this watch isn't even made of gold or encrusted with diamonds,
05:57its case is actually made of stainless steel. But because it was only made as a single piece,
06:03features an extremely complex mechanism, and carries the name Patek Philippe. This steel watch
06:08ultimately costs even more than most luxury homes in the world.
06:25If spending tens of millions of dollars on a watch already sounds crazy, the next item has actually been
06:32dead for over 100 million years. It is called the apex fossil stegosaurus discovered in Colorado,
06:38United States.
06:41And this isn't just a few pieces of dinosaur bones, because apex is one of the most complete
06:46stegosaurus skeletons ever discovered.
06:51This fossil stands about 3.3 meters tall and is over 8 meters long, making it even longer than a
06:58car.
07:00This skeleton comes from a stegosaurus that lived about 150 million years ago,
07:06and it was discovered in 2022 on private land.
07:12The excavation process then went on for months, until most of the animals bones were finally uncovered.
07:20Because of its extraordinary condition and completeness,
07:24apex was then brought to Sotheby's auction house in 2012.
07:27Initially, this fossil was estimated to sell for only around 4 to 6 million US dollars.
07:32But once the auction started, collectors actually fiercely competed against one another to acquire it.
07:40Until finally, the auction gavel fell at a price of 44.6 million US dollars,
07:47or roughly the equivalent of nearly 90 supercars priced at $500,000 each.
07:53In fact, that price made apex break the record as the most expensive fossil ever sold at an auction.
08:00And interestingly, the buyer wasn't a museum or a government,
08:04but it was bought by an American billionaire, Ken Griffin.
08:08Fortunately, after paying tens of millions of dollars to get it,
08:11Apex wasn't kept at home for private enjoyment.
08:14This dinosaur skeleton was then loaned to the American Museum of Natural History in New York,
08:19so the public could still see one of the most incredible stegosaurus ever discovered.
08:37If you saw this car driving down the street, you'd probably think it was just an extremely rare classic Mercedes.
08:43But whatever you do, don't bump into it, because this single car once sold for 135 million euros.
08:52This is the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe, one of the rarest and most valuable cars ever made.
09:01This car was built by Mercedes-Benz in 1955 and developed from the 300 SLR race car that the company
09:08used in motorsport.
09:09It was named after one of Mercedes-Benz's legendary engineers, Rudolf Uhlenhaut,
09:15who helped develop the car and even used it as his personal vehicle.
09:21What makes it extraordinarily rare is its production number.
09:26Mercedes-Benz only made two units of the 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe,
09:30and for decades both remained in the company's collection.
09:34Until in 2022, something that almost never happens was finally done by Mercedes-Benz,
09:41where one of the two cars was secretly offered to a number of collectors through a private auction.
09:49And when the bidding process was over, this car was sold for around $143 million,
09:55making it more expensive than a Boeing 737 MAX 8.
10:00In fact, because of this ridiculously high price,
10:03the car even broke the record as the most expensive car ever sold in the world.
10:19While we could still make sense of that $143 million car because it's rare and only two units were ever
10:25made,
10:27this next item is way weirder.
10:28Because this item, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, is basically just a chip-making machine.
10:34It's called the ASML Twinscan XLXC 5200B, one of the most advanced lithography machines ever made by human hands.
10:44It's machines just like this that are used to manufacture the latest generation of semiconductor chips,
10:50but don't imagine it looks like a regular printer.
10:53This high-end EUV system made by ASML is massive, consisting of tens of thousands of components,
10:59and shipping just one system requires dozens of crates and several cargo planes.
11:06The way it works even sounds like technology straight out of a science fiction movie,
11:11where the machine uses extreme ultraviolet light, or EUV, with a wavelength of only about 13.5 nanometers.
11:20That light is used to help etch incredibly tiny patterns onto silicon wafers,
11:25which will later become part of computer chips.
11:28And the smaller the patterns that can be made, the more transistors that can be packed into a single chip.
11:36The problem is, building a machine capable of doing all that is extraordinarily difficult.
11:42Even EUV light can't be treated like ordinary light.
11:46This technology requires optical systems and mirrors with an exceptionally high level of precision,
11:51so that the printing process can be carried out accurately.
11:55Because of that complexity, the latest generation high-end EUV machines are in the hundreds of millions of dollars price
12:00range for a single system.
12:03And virtually only one company is capable of creating EUV lithography technology like this,
12:08which is a Dutch company called ASML.
12:12Due to this complexity and extremely high price,
12:15not many companies in the world are able to own and build one.
12:33While the previous machine cost hundreds of millions of dollars because of the extraordinarily complex technology inside,
12:40the next item is much simpler, it's just a painting.
12:43But to buy it, someone had to be willing to spend more than 450 million US dollars,
12:50a equivalent price of three Boeing 737 MAX, eight planes.
12:54This is Salator Mundi, a painting depicting Jesus Christ raising one hand in blessing,
13:00while his other hand holds a crystal orb.
13:06This painting is believed to date back to around the year 1500,
13:11and is attributed to one of the most famous artists in history, Leonardo da Vinci.
13:19However, the journey of this painting is perhaps just as fascinating as its price,
13:23as the whereabouts of Salator Mundi remained unclear for hundreds of years.
13:28And when it resurfaced, it was already damaged, and many parts had been repainted.
13:34In fact, in 2005, the painting was bought by a group of art dealers for less than 10,000 US
13:40dollars.
13:42Yet after years of cleaning and restoration, experts later attributed it to Leonardo da Vinci.
13:48And from then on, its value changed completely.
13:54In 2017, Salator Mundi was brought to Christie's auction house in New York,
14:00and sold for around 450.3 million US dollars.
14:04It was so expensive that the price made Salator Mundi break the record
14:08as the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.
14:30While more than 450 million dollars was spent to buy a painting,
14:34the United States spent a far greater amount of money
14:36to make something that was actually designed to be hard for radar to see.
14:41This is the B-2 Spirit.
14:44A stealth bomber that is one of the most expensive and advanced military aircraft ever built.
14:52Just from its shape alone, the B-2 already looks different.
14:56This aircraft has almost no fuselage or tail like conventional airplanes.
15:00Its design uses the flying wing concept.
15:04So from above, it looks like a giant wing.
15:09But that shape wasn't just made to look cool.
15:12The B-2 was indeed designed to reduce the chance of radar detection,
15:16allowing this plane to penetrate enemy air defenses to carry out bombing missions.
15:25It's also enormous, with a wingspan stretching over 52 meters nearly half the length of a football field.
15:32But what's truly crazy, of course, is the cost.
15:35The U.S. Air Force listed the production cost of a single aircraft at around 1.157 billion US dollars.
15:45And that figure even still uses 1998 dollar values.
16:01And because it was so ridiculously expensive, only 21 units of this aircraft were ever built, of which one plane
16:07was later destroyed in a crash in 2008.
16:25And coming in at number one as the most expensive object in the world, there's something that isn't even on
16:31Earth.
16:32This is the International Space Station, or ISS, a giant space station orbiting Earth at an altitude of about 400
16:40kilometers.
16:43Its size is truly extraordinary.
16:45From end to end, the ISS is about 109 meters long, while its solar panel wingspan also spans over 100
16:53meters.
16:55But building something this huge in space is obviously not as easy as constructing a building on Earth.
17:01The ISS was never launched all in one piece.
17:04This station was built piece by piece, using various modules flown into space across many different missions.
17:12Its first module was launched back in 1998, after which various other parts started being sent one by one, then
17:21assembled directly in orbit by astronauts and cosmonauts.
17:26That process went on for years and involved cooperation between various countries.
17:31The United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, as well as member states of the European Space Agency, all contributed to this
17:39massive project.
17:41And of course, all of that required an enormous amount of money.
17:46When taking into account construction, launches, assembly, and its operation over the years,
17:52the cost of the ISS is often estimated to reach around 150 billion US dollars, which is equivalent to the
17:58cost of building 10 Burj Khalifa towers.
18:01This figure even means the ISS is often cited as one of the most expensive man-made objects ever built.
18:08Inside the ISS itself, there are laboratories where astronauts carry out various experiments that are difficult or even impossible to
18:16conduct on Earth.
18:19What's even crazier is that this colossal object worth around 150 billion dollars doesn't just sit still up there.
18:25The ISS orbits the Earth at a speed of about 28,000 kilometers per hour.
18:32At that speed, it only takes the ISS about 90 minutes to orbit the Earth once.
18:49And there you have it, the most expensive man-made objects in the world.
18:53I hope you found this information useful and I'll see you in our next exciting video.
18:57We'll see you in the next video.
19:00We'll see you in the next video.
19:01We'll see you in the next video.
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