Every price has a story.
The real stories behind record prices, strange auctions and everyday price tags. Every number comes with its source.
$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.
$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.
$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 became the most expensive console of its kind.
£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.
$217.77
Toys & Collectibles
In 1976, a lot of used NASA videotape 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.
$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.
-$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.
