The world’s most expensive objects: by weight (II)
The search, it seems, may be at an end. Two months ago, we compared the cost of several high-value objects - the Gherkin, a Trident nuclear missile, truffles, etc - by their weight, and discovered that diamonds, at £34,450,000 per kg, comfortably held off Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks as the world’s most expensive stuff.
So lively was the discussion about what other things we might have included in our list that we decided to do a second round and found, to our amazement, an item more than 100 times as expensive as the world’s most precious stone.
The Treskilling Yellow is a fantastically rare stamp dating from the first issue of postage stamps in Sweden in 1855. It is all the more prized because it was issued in error - a printing malfunction caused a small number of the first 3-skilling banco stamps, which were supposed to be blue, to come out yellowy orange. The only one known still to exist has changed hands seven times since, most recently in 1996 for 2.5 million Swiss francs. (To its great advantage in our calculations, it weighs just 250mg.)
Not even a 1787 bottle of Château Lafite, once owned by Thomas Jefferson, and which sold for $156,450 (around £96,000) at auction in 1985, comes close.
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Tune Up Your PC » Post Topic » The world’s most expensive objects: by weight - October 31, 2009
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