You know the saying – “He’s worth his weight in salt.” But salt’s not all that valuable these days, except to pizzerias and Chinese take-outs. So what would you like to be worth your weight in? Personally, I’d like to be worth my weight in chicken-derived monoclonal antibodies.
There’s a reason why we have different units of measure around, but I thought it’d be fun to even out the playing field, so to speak. So, how much does stuff cost per pound, anyway? And don’t complain about lbs. vs. kg – the orders of magnitude here makes the 2.2 conversion factor a piddling quantity.
| Item | Unit price per pound |
| Water, Tap | $0.00018 |
| Acetaminophen, Tylenol Extra Strength, from Costco | $0.04 |
| Rice, commodity | $0.12 |
| Salt, Morton table salt, 25 lb. bag | $0.31 |
| Gasoline, average New England (@ 6.2 lbs./gal) | $0.44 |
| Juice, Orange (@ 8.3 lbs./gal) | $0.95 |
| Water, Aquafina 20 oz., vending machine | $1.20 |
| Silicon, metallurgical grade | $1.45 |
| Rice, Kokuho Rose 5 lb. bag | $2.00 |
| Copper | $3.68 |
| Ford F-150 | $5.50 |
| Book, American Heritage Dictionary | $6.05 |
| Jeans, Levi’s 501 | $19.44 |
| Maple Syrup, Butternut Mountain Farm | $26.76 |
| Playstation 3 | $27.18 |
| Kitten, adoption | $50.00 |
| Cigarettes, Marlboro, MA minimum price | $143.77 |
| Fetal Bovine Serum, Hyclone, 500 mL bottle | $191.78 |
| PVC figurine, Senjougahara Hitagi 1/8 scale | $378.87 |
| Printer ink, Canon CLI-8 black | $488.57 |
| iPhone 4, 32 GB | $990.85 |
| Violin, decent quality | $10,000.00 |
| Gold | $19,697.42 |
| Immunoglobulin, from human plasma | $27,240.00 |
| Cocaine, street retail | $29,510.00 |
| Cocaine, research grade free base | $230,178.00 |
| Diamond, natural, 1 carat, decent quality | $22,700,000.00 |
| Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells, 500k ampoule | $43,991,408.11 |
| Lucentis (ranibizumab, anti-VEGF), wholesale | $590,200,000.00 |
| Anti-VEGF antibody from chicken, research grade | $2,151,960,000.00 |
| Antimatter | $28,375,000,000,000.00 |
Leave a Reply