The world’s most expensive substances

A German business magazine this summer published a list of the worlds most expensive materials. If you thought gold, rhino horns and Rhodium cost a bundle, there are substances which are much, much more expensive (and we are talking truly staggering numbers here).

Ranks 8 to 10 are held by drugs (the illegal kind that is), with prices per gram ranging from €97 for crystal meth to up to €2400 for LSD. In seventh place we find Plutonium with a price tag of roughly €3200 per gram.

Then it gets interesting: have you ever heard of Taafeite? Apparently it is one of the rarest gemstones in the world, mostly found in Sri Lanka and southern Tanzania. Depending on the purity, Taaffeite can cost between €2000 and €16000 per gram.

In 5th place is Tritium, which is a by-product of nuclear fission and an integral part of atomic bombs. It occurs naturally only in the stratosphere. When gaseous tritium is sealed with a fluorescent, it can glow independently. A single gram of this substance will set you back approximately €24’000.

Next up are a girl’s best friends: Diamonds. Graded along the 4 Cs (carat, colour, clarity and cut) the can cost up to €52’000 per gram.

In third place is again a substance most people including myself probably have never heard of: Painite is an extremely rare, red-brown coloured mineral. Due to its rarity and aesthetic appeal, it is a sought-after gemstone for collectors and jewellery artists. Accordingly painite has a proud price. One gram costs up to €241’000.

Californium 252, Cf-252 for short, is an artificially produced chemical element which is produced in nuclear reactors. It has its use in in cancer treatments and oil drilling. Californium-252 was first produced in 1950 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. It is one of the heaviest elements that can be produced in significant quantities. Its special feature is its ability to spontaneously emit high-energy neutrons, making it a significant source of neutron radiation. It is commonly used to help start up nuclear reactors, but also in treating cancers which are resistant to traditional radiation, and it can be found in security and border control devices to identify elements that might otherwise go undetected by traditional scanners. One gram costs up to 21 million Euros, which is why californium 252 is the second most expensive substance in the world.

And finally, drumroll please, the most expensive substance of all: Antimatter. This is a form of matter composed of antiparticles, which are counterparts to the particles that make up ordinary matter. For every type of particle, there is a corresponding antiparticle with the same mass but opposite electric charge and other quantum properties. When particles of matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other, converting their mass into energy according to Einstein’s famous equation E = mc^2 . As antimatter is only very short-lived and it has never been possible to produce stable quantities, its value is theoretical.

The short lifespan in combination with the difficulty of producing antimatter or capturing it in the long term pushes up the theoretical value accordingly, which is why antimatter is the most expensive substance in the world. One gram of it is said to be worth up to 100 trillion Euros (and just in case you are wondering, that’s 100 followed by twelve zeros).

But I can’t help wondering, whether this supposed value of Antimatter is even realistic: No single individual, organisation or government on its own could afford even a gram, let alone a larger quantity. So is there any sense or purpose in such an outlandish valuation?