The 7 Most Expensive Things in the World

Imagine you were the richest person on Earth and had enough cash to proclaim, "Let's buy a social media platform!" or "Fetch me the most expensive things that exist!" Luckily, BBC Science Focus has done the legwork for you on the latter and found those costly materials—including a substance taken from the surface of the asteroid Bennu. The magazine notes, however, "that since many of the substances here aren't traded as common commodities, price estimates can vary widely." Here, the seven materials with the steepest price tags:

1. Antimatter; $59.8 trillion per gram
2. Nitrogen atom-based endohedral fullerenes; $134 million per gram
3. Californium-252 (used in nuclear reactors); $25.6 million per gram
4. Samples from Bennu asteroid; $9.6 million per gram
5. Red diamonds; $4.7 million per gram
6. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires; $483,000 per gram
7. Helium-3; $96,000 per gram

(More expensive stories.)