Every price has a story.
The real stories behind record prices, strange auctions and everyday price tags. Every number comes with its source.
$2.76 million
Movie & TV Props
Its parts don't match, nothing inside it works, and a fan assembled it rather than a studio. That patchwork history is exactly what pushed this R2-D2 past its auction estimate.
$1.49 million
Movie & TV Props
It never appeared in an episode, and it is made of plastic. But the Iron Throne that toured the world for Game of Thrones became the top lot of a $21 million auction, because fans had already made it famous.
$3,000,000
Video Games
The most valuable copy of Super Mario Bros. is one that nobody ever opened. A small Nintendo sticker, a short test-market window and a console box that stayed shut for decades explain the price.
$615,000
Sneakers
Plenty of game-worn Air Jordans exist. This pair has something the others don't: a piece of the backboard Michael Jordan shattered in Italy in 1985, still stuck in the sole.
$3,654,000
Movie & TV Props
The hilt began life as an English camera flash from the 1950s. What made this particular one worth millions was a bent belt ring and a dented cap that tie it to the screen.
$250,000
Movie & TV Props
In Jurassic Park, a can of shaving cream hides stolen dinosaur embryos and ends up lost in the mud. The real prop, machined so it actually opens, came out of the Planet Hollywood collection and sold for a quarter of a million dollars.
$200,000
Sneakers
In the movie, the self-tying laces were a trick. When Nike finally made them work, it built only 89 pairs, and the last one went to a charity auction for $200,000.
$16,492,000
Trading Cards
No store ever sold the Pikachu Illustrator card. You had to win one in an illustration contest, and in 2026 the best-graded copy set the auction record for any trading card.
$3,135,000
Movie & TV Props
It was one of only four detailed X-wing models built for close-ups in the original Star Wars, and then it went missing. Its rediscovery in a cardboard box turned a lost miniature into a multimillion-dollar lot.
$360,000
Video Games
It looks like a Super Nintendo with a CD tray, and that is exactly what it is. The partnership that produced it collapsed in public, Sony went on to build the PlayStation alone, and a surviving prototype set a Guinness World Record when it sold.
£704,750
Art
It is under three inches wide, and Fabergé's London branch probably sold it for £60 in 1909. A path through two royal families helps explain why it fetched more than the average London home.
$525,000
Toys & Collectibles
The Boba Fett that kids actually received couldn't fire its rocket. The ones that could were prototypes that never reached stores, and in 2024 one of them briefly became the most valuable vintage toy ever sold.
$254,500
Toys & Collectibles
A worn Olivetti bought in a Knoxville pawnshop for $50 sold for nearly 13 times its top estimate. The machine mattered less than the letter its owner typed on it.
$217.77
Toys & Collectibles
In 1976, a lot of used NASA magnetic tape went under the hammer at a government surplus sale in Houston. Three of the reels held the first moonwalk, and 43 years later they sold for more than 8,000 times what the whole lot had cost.
$108,000
Toys & Collectibles
The first design for Coke's famous bottle was a little too wide for bottlers' machines. A prototype of the slimmed-down version, the shape everyone knows, sold for $108,000.
7,000,000 Pepsi Points
Brands & Business
A mid-1990s Pepsi commercial put a fighter jet in its prize catalog for 7 million points, and Pepsi sold extra points for a dime. One customer did the math, mailed a check, and ended up in federal court.
$60.4 million
Brands & Business
In 1992, Hoover's European arm offered two free return flights to anyone who spent £100 on its products. The tickets were worth far more than the vacuum cleaners, and customers did the math.
$12
Brands & Business
The most famous address on the internet showed up as available in Google's own domain store, and the checkout went through. What happened next shows the gap between what a domain costs and what it is worth, and how Google pays people who find its mistakes.
$245,300
Brands & Business
The 2017 festival collapsed before a single act played. Eight years later, its name alone drew 175 bids on eBay and sold for $245,300.
HK$7.6 million (about US$970,000)
Everyday Prices
A single rectangle of basement concrete in Hong Kong's Central district sold for close to a million U.S. dollars. The price only makes sense once you follow the skyscraper above it.
$7.4 billion
Everyday Prices
Until 2008, the big U.S. airlines let your first suitcase ride free. Pulling it out of the fare created a fee that now runs up to $50 at the counter, and the federal ticket tax generally doesn't touch it.
$1.50
Everyday Prices
Almost everything has gotten more expensive since the 1980s, but not the Costco hot dog. The combo holds its price because Costco makes its real money somewhere else: the card you show to get in.
-$8.6 million
Everyday Prices
Vizio's last annual report shows its TV and soundbar business lost money at the gross-profit line in 2023. The profit came after the sale, from ads, data and content on the screen.
$6.92 a pound
Everyday Prices
The price on a pack of ground beef was largely set years ago, on pastures, by decisions about which cows to keep and which to sell.
$8.4 million
Trading Cards
A Pikachu drawn by a fan for a contest, with 100 copies printed as a prize, became the second most expensive Pokémon card ever sold. Even the collecting press struggled to explain the jump.
£18.6 million
Art
In 2018, a Banksy painting shredded itself seconds after it sold. Three years later, the half-destroyed canvas sold again for about 18 times the original price, because the shredding turned a famous image into a one-time event.
