The most valuable picture postcard in the world was sent by Theodore Hook Esq. to himself in 1840 and was bought at the London Stamp Exchange auction, UK on 8 March 2002 by collector Eugene Gomberg (Latvia) for £31,758.75 ($45,370.60). It is also considered to be the oldest postcard in the world.
The most expensive pizza, commercially available, is a thin-crust, wood fire-baked pizza topped with onion puree, white truffle paste, fontina cheese, baby mozzarella, pancetta, cep mushrooms, freshly picked wild mizuna lettuce and garnished with fresh shavings of a rare Italian white truffle, itself worth £1,400 (then $2,500) per 1 kg (2 lb 3 oz). Depending upon the amount of truffles available each season, the pizza is regularly sold at £100 (then $178) each to customers of Gordon Ramsey’s Maze restaurant, London, UK.
The most expensive perfume is V1, designed by Arfaq (UK), 29 ml (0.5 oz) of which was commissioned privately at a price of $232,450 (£122,490) by His Royal Highness Prince Faisal Bin Fahad Bin Abdullah Al Saud, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, in London, UK on 29 October 2006.
For the musical stage version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which opened on 16 April 2002 at the London Palladium, London, UK, the magical flying car of the title cost an estimated £750,000 (US$1.07 million) to make. The complete set including the flying car was designed by the award winning set designer Anthony Ward (UK). At a cost of £6.2 million (US$8.9 million) to stage, the show is the most expensive in British history – beating the previous record by set by Cats. (£6 million)
The highest price ever achieved for a sheep is £231,000 ($369,000), paid by Jimmy Douglas for the eight-month-old Texel tup, Deveronvale Perfection, in Lanark, Scotland, in August 2009. Bred in Banffshire sheep farmer Graham Morrison, this very valuable sheep will be used for breeding purposes.It was reported in September 2011 that a single Dolan sheep – a rare breed of only ca.1,000 – was up for sale in China, where the highest bid received was for 14 million yuan (£1.4 million), although no sale was
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The most expensive sculpture sold at auction is Alberto Giacometti’s (Switzerland) bronze sculpture entitled L’Homme qui marche I (The Walking Man I) (1960), which sold to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby’s London, UK for a record £65,000,000 (then $103,676,000) on 3 February 2010. The six-foot-tall bronze depicts a wiry man in mid-stride, his right foot jutting forward, his head erect and his arms hanging at his side.
The most expensive sandwich commercially available is von Essen Platinum Club Sandwich, created by Chef Daniel Galmiche (UK) and is available on the menu of Cliveden, Buckinghamshire, UK for £100 ($200). The sandwich was added to the menu in March 2007. Sandwiched between three slices of 24-hour fermented sour-dough bread is Iberico ham, poulet de Bresse, white truffles, quail eggs, semi-dried Italian tomatoes.
Depicting how dinosaurs lived, reproduced and became extinct, the BBC’s documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs cost over £37,654 ($61,112) per minute to produce. Taking over two years to produce, the six part series, with each episode having a running time of 27 minutes, cost a total of £6.1 million ($9.9 million). The first episode was aired on 4 October 1999. It featured computer graphics and animatronics with background footage filmed in locations around the world. The series won three Emmy Awards on 10 September 2000.
The most expensive bowl of soup commercially available costs £108 ($190) and is featured on the menu at the Kai Mayfair restaurant, London, UK. The soup is called Buddha Jumps Over the Wall and contains shark’s fin, abalone, Japanese flower mushroom, sea cucumber, dried scallops, chicken, huan ham, pork and ginseng. Due to its unique nature, the dish has to be pre-ordered 5 days in advance.
The most expensive tooth sold at auction cost £23,010 ($36,857) and was bought by Dr Michael Zuk (Canada) at the Omega Auction House in Stockport, Cheshire, UK, on 5 November 2011. The tooth is reported to have belonged to John Lennon. The final hammer price was £19,500 and the auction house commission was £3,510.