The world has a limited quantity of fascinating, noble and exotic materials – the rarer, the more expensive. And anyone who thinks about particularly valuable materials will probably immediately think of gold, platinum, palladium or iridium. Many serve as a safe haven for investment.
In general, however, they are far from playing in the big league of the most expensive things in the world. Palladium and iridium are currently around € 25 per gram, gold costs around $45 and platinum is only slightly higher.
World’s most expensive thing in the world – from drugs to antimatter.
These magnitudes fade completely when it comes to gram prices that extend well beyond the million mark. The most expensive things in the world, however, are those that private individuals have little access to, and if so, not legally. The ranking is opened by a consortium of illegal drugs.
8. Drugs (up to $600 per gram)
According to a study, one gram of heroin costs around $200. For cocaine, the price goes up to $300 for a gram and for the fashion drug Crystal Meth over $500. The fastest-acting high-dependency drug is called Crack and has a dealer price of over $600 per gram. This is the price for Black Market sales of drugs. Some of the drugs are more than 10 times more expensive than gold.
7. Plutonium ($5600 Per Gram)
The next big jump leads into the world of nuclear materials. Among other things, Plutonium is not found naturally but is produced from the Uranium, the fuel of nuclear power plants. However, it became known around the world because the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1954 contained plutonium. The gram would theoretically be for $5600.
6. Taaffeite (up to $17,500 per gram)
In 1945, a very rare gem was discovered, by the Irish explorer Earl Eduard Taaffe. According to an analysis in London, it was an unknown mineral back then. Since then it has been called Taaffeite and costs between $2,500 and $17,500 per gram.
5. Tritium ($30,000 per gram)
The radioactive gas tritium is not only a component of nuclear warheads, it is also used in traces in medicine to mark certain substances. It also lights up dials in watches and other light sources. Tritium is obtained as a by-product of nuclear fission. The Global commercial demand for Tritium is just 400Grams. The price per gram is $30,000 per gram.
4. Diamonds (up to $72,000)
The diamonds are the hardest natural substances in the world and are used in both jewelry and in the industry equipment, often for cutting, drilling or sawing concrete and rock. With a carat fineness, a colorless stone in the top can cost up to $72,000 per gram. Always thought diamonds were the most expensive thing in the world, Didn’t you? Well, think again.
3. Painite ($300,000 Per Gram)
Painite is an orange-red crystal that derives its name from the British mineralogist Arthur Pain, who discovered him in Burma in 1957. Since then, only a few thousand Painite stones have been found. The pieces weighing up to 500 grams are only used in the jewelry industry. Cost The price is about $300,000 Per Gram.
2. Californium 252 ($27 million)
Californium 252 is the artificially produced in nuclear reactors. Californium chemical element 252 was discovered in 1950 at the University of California. Among other things, it is used for cancer treatment and is used for measurements in oil drilling, for finding explosives or in material diagnostics. As little as 0.25g of the element is produced in a single year. All this suggests that one gram costs over 27 million US $. Yet it falls short of being the most expensive thing in the world by a huge margin.
1. Antimatter (up to $ 100 trillion)
The most expensive substance is one that exceeds our imagination: antimatter. For a long time, it was only mathematically proven as a result of the Big Bang, but was recently produced at the European Research Center CERN for the first time in the nanogram range. With quantities of more than one kilogram, the amount of energy that could be released will correspond to the annual output of 500 nuclear power plants. As a super propulsion for spaceships, it could enable travel to other galaxies. Our global energy problems would be solved. Antimatter produced at CERN could not be stopped for more than 17 minutes before it dissipated. Just as incomprehensible are the astronomical price expectations. Depending on the source, prices range between $62 to $100 trillion per gram.
It is a popular saying that only true connoisseurs should get involved in the trade of diamonds. Similarly, only a person of knowledge would be able to put a price tag upon the most expensive thing in the world. There are people who buy some of these expensive things for trade and there are also a few enthusiasts who just buy them because it would be a prized possession. Some of the inclusions are expensive but illegal, some of them are hardly produced or found naturally but they all have certain characteristics that makes it the most expensive things in the world.