Most Expensive Music Video Ever

When MTV first went on air in 1981, music videos became an important part of promoting an artist. Nowadays, hardcore fans will even buy DVDs featuring all of their favorite artists’ videos. The most memorable music videos, of course, are usually the most expensive. These are the most expensive music videos in the world.

5. Puff Daddy (featuring The Notorious B.I.G. and Busta Rhymes) – “Victory”
$2.7 million

Taking place in the year 3002 CE, this video features Puff Daddy as Contestant #5. Dennis Hopper and Danny DeVito both make cameos—as a dictatorial president and a live action reporter, respectively—as Contestant #5 is chased through dark streets and rooftops by the armed forces of Chase TV.

4. Madonna – “Bedtime Story”
$5 million

An experimental video set to an equally experimental song, the “Bedtime Story” video consists of surreal, dreamlike images. Throughout the video, Madonna floats, gives birth to doves and ends up having her eyes and mouth transposed.

3. Madonna – “Die Another Day”
$6 million
Another song by the pop diva, this one was released alongside the James Bond film of the same name. The video shows Madonna being tortured in a number of ways while Good Madonna and Bad Madonna duel with a variety of weapons—from fencing foils to harpoon guns—in her subconscious. After its release, “Die Another Day” became the most successful 007 theme since the 80s.

2. Michael Jackson (featuring Janet Jackson) – “Scream”
$7 million

One of Michael Jackson’s most successful videos, “Scream” is a black and white science fiction/pop masterpiece that has both Jacksons dancing along the walls and ceilings of a spaceship while anime and pop art are featured on various displays throughout. The video received widespread approval, including several MTV Video Music Awards and even a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.

1. 30 Seconds to Mars – “From Yesterday”
$13 million?

The first American music video to be shot entirely in the People’s Republic of China, this expensive music video has 30 Seconds to Mars transported to ancient China where they play for a child emperor. The video features more than 300 extras and was directed by Bartholomew Cubbins, an alias for actor and Mars frontman Jared Leto. However, the $13 million figure is disputed—is this the world’s most expensive music video?

Most Expensive Turntable in the World

The turntable started out as a device used to play music by rotating a phonograph record on a a circular horizontal platform, but it has evolved into a music instrument itself and some models now are just as much as the costliest instrument. The record player was the most popular device for playing sound from the 1870s through the 1980s, but in the modern work-a-day world of iTunes and Sattelite radio, the record player is often overlooked. DJs and Turntablism brought new life and new expensive turntables to the consumer and keeps the record player adapting.

Vinyl is alive and kicking because the most passionate and wealthy audiophiles know that CD’s or mp3’s sound can‘t touch anything on these—the most expensive turntables.

Continuum Caliburn – up to $112,000

Vinyl isn’t dead, and The Continuum Caliburn turntable proves this by aiming for audio perfection. The price for this expensive turntable starts at $90,000 and goes up to $112,000, depending on finishes and includes some amazing technology. The tonearm alone sells for $12,000. The turntable uses a magnetically levitated magnesium platter suspended in a vacuum to assure there are no vibrations.

Clearaudio Statement – $125,000

This 770-pound hunk of wood and aluminum features a magnetically-driven sub-platter that completely eliminates contact with the main platter and real time speed control. A 176 lb pendulum ensures that the platters are always level and a high speed microprocessor-controlled motor drive unit, similar to that used in the Mars rover, keeps the records turning.

Basis Work of Art – $150,000

This Work of Art uses a “mass-spring-dampener” suspension system to completely isolate the turntable from the listening environment while an AC synchronous instrument motor provides the speed-stability necessary to put the most ardent audiophiles at ease. The Work of Art’s support structure is so rigid that audible resonance is eliminated.

Goldmund Reference II – $300,000

The successor to the 25-year-old Goldmund Reference is a high-precision turntable with level calibration to less than 1/100th of a millimeter and its stylus, pivot and counterweight “perfectly aligned for optimal dynamic balance.” Three Teflon tubes prevent vibration of the wires as they carry signal from the turntable. The turntable also features a digital processor that provides RIAA correction which, I’m guessing, has nothing to do with those people who sue people for downloading MP3 files.
The world’s most expensive turntable is limited to a mere twenty-five units with only five being made per year.

Most Expensive Photograph

The Pond-Moonlight by Edward Steichen has become the most expensive photograph ever, as it was just recentely sold for more than $2,900,000 during a Sotheby’s sale which began in New York on February 14, 2006. The expensive photograph was taken on Long Island in 1904. There are three known copies of the most expensive photograph in , and the picture is valued for its rarity because it is an early example of color autochrome photography. The other two copies of the photograph are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and theMuseum of Modern Art.

Pond-Moonlight by Edward Steichen

Richard Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy) was previously the most expensive photograph in the world. The photograph can be seen as destroying the American cowboy myth. The cowboy is a stand-in for the artist himself, endlessly running off into the sunset. This most expensive photograph in the world creates a desire to experience rather than worry about material value of things.

Richard Prince

The most expensive photographs in the world in US dollar figures.

1. Edward Steichen Pond-Moonlight (1904), $2,900,000+, 2006
2. Richard Prince Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), $1,248,000, 2005
3. Gustave Le Gray The Great Wave, Sete, (1857), $838,000, 1999
4. Andreas Gursky Untitled 5 1997, $559,724, Feb. 6, 2002
5. Gustave Le Gray Tree (1855), $513,150, 1999
6. Diane Arbus Identical Twins (Cathleen and Colleen), Roselle, N.J. (1967), $478,400, Apr. 27, 2004
7. Charles Sheeler Ford Works (1927), $447,350, 1999
8. Alfred Stieglitz Georgia O’Keefe: Hands with Thimble, $398,500, May 31, 1998
9. Gustave Le Gray Marine 1855, $368,420, 2000
10. August Sander Handlanger, porteur de briques (Brick carrier) 1927, $328,940, 1999

The market for photography as an art form has come a long way in the last several decades. Pictures that were once sold for less than $100, or even casually thrown away, are now hot properties on the auction market… As always, the results are taken from Artnet’s signature Fine Art Auctions Database src

Most Expensive Doll

Most people play with dolls, figures and replicas as toys when they are young. Some dolls are simple stuffed animals with plastic heads, and others are action figures complete with body armor and weapons. Certain dolls are exquisite works of visual art and engineering.

L’Oiseleur (The Bird Trainer), a 4-ft-tall automaton doll, comes complete with sword, flute, pair of singing birds, and embroidered Renaissance-Era clothing. The expensive doll plays the flute, playing Marche des Rois by Georges Bizet. This amazing doll does not run on electricity or any motors but spring-driven cogs and gears.

The asking price for this most expensive doll is $6,250,000, yes 6.25 million US dollars. The price has to justify the 2,340 gilt or polished-steel parts and over 15,000 hours in a Swiss workshop that it took to create this extraordinary figure.

Most Expensive Comic Book

Many people read comic books growing up as kids, but a certain few retain their passion and become meticulous collectors of expensive comic books. Other people think of comic books as juvenile superhero fantasies, but modern comic books, manga and graphic novels are beginning to change this perception. What is the most expensive comic book in the world?

Any serious comic book collector can tell you that the world’s most expensive comic book is DC’s Action Comics #1 (1938). Written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by Joe Shuster, this book contained our first 12-page glimpse of the iconic superhero– Superman. One may wonder why this comic would outsell, say, the first appearance of Spider-Man, especially considering the recent success of the Spider-Man movie franchise and the box office flop that marked Superman’s return to Hollywood. The answer lies not in the fact that Action Comics #1 contains the first appearance of Superman, but that it contains the first appearance of the superhero.

All of the stereotypical devices of the superhero genre are combined for the first time in this issue; superpowers, secret identities, pseudo-scientific origins and, yes, even tights. Superman was the amalgamation of Greek myth with Flash Gordan and just a smattering of everyday life. Ultimately, it was the same combination that we still see today, to some extent, in the immensely successful Batman, X-Men and Spider-Man franchises.

According to Scoop, a comics newsletter, a Comics Guaranty (CGC)-certified 4.0 (“very good” condition) copy of Action Comics #1 was sold for $195,000 in May of 2006, out-pricing the 2004 expensive comic books sale of a CGC-certified 9.4 (“near mint” condition) copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, containing Spider-Man’s first appearance, by more than $70,000.

Most Expensive Book Ever Sold

Shakespeare’s “First Folio,” a first edition collection of the Bard’s plays was the most expensive book sold at auction in 2006, bringing $5.1 million USD. The book was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death and contains a dozen plays that have never been reprinted as well as many that are considered classics today. The original printing issued 750 copies of the book and perhaps a third of these still exist today, albeit generally incomplete copies. With its original price of twenty shillings per copy, the book has needless to say undergone a remarkable price increase. It was a literary custom and common practice for readers to make revisions, additions and annotations to original books and manuscripts and this piece is no exception, with many notes giving insight into the book’s storied readership (perhaps a literary precursor to open-source software). The book was auctioned by Dr. Williams’ Library, a London library that contains a remarkable collection of first editions and manuscripts. It is said that the auction, carried out by Sotheby’s Auction House, will secure the finances and aging collection of the library for the near future.

Following up the most expensive book of 2006 was the first printed atlas, “Cosmography,” based on the work of second century Greek mathematician, geographer and astronemer Ptolemy. Printed in 1477, only two copies are held by private collectors today. The book fetched an impressive $4 million. It is worthy of note that five of the top ten most expensive books of 2006 were atlases, three of which were based on Ptolemy’s works. Atlases presented a unique challenge for early printers, as each map had to be etched into a printing plate by hand, precisely copying the original sources which were often over a thousand years old.

a page from Codex Leicester

As impressive as the value of those books may be, they pale in comparison to the record for the world’s most expensive book ever sold. Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Codex Leicester,” a notebook filled with original drawings, notes and sketches was sold to Microsoft founder Bill Gates for an incredible $30.8 million dollars in 1994. The most expensive printed book on record is James Audobon’s “Birds of America,” which sold in 2000 for $8.8 million. Audobon is a noted illustrator who pioneered much of early wildlife research. His work vastly increased popular awareness of the breadth of species in our world, and is still very highly regarded today for its accuracy and poignant detail.

Da Vinci’s “Codex” and Audobon’s “Birds” may, however, have a contender in 2008. Tomas Hartmann, the self-proclaimed “greatest philosopher of all time,” plans to sell a single copy of his book, “The Task,” for €153 million ($223 million USD). He only plans to sell a single copy of the thirteen-page book which is the culmination of thirty years of work. Despite his status as an international unknown, Hartmann’s book will be displayed at the Book Expo America 2008 Fair in Los Angeles and the Buch Wien Fair.

Hartmann also plans to sell an edition of 5,000 copies of a book of his philosophical poems, which he will introduce at the Linz international book fair, for €1530 per book ($2,234 in USD). However, if Hartmann wins a literary award, he plans to increase the price to €1.53 million per book.

While any reader, scholarly or not would be proud to own an original edition of Shakespeare’s work, perhaps we will see an even more outlandishly expensive price tag for a historic literary work in the near future. Rare original manuscripts that contain the artists’ and writers’ hand workings often sell for vast sums, and are put to auction fairly regularly. The rare book market is doing quite well and the prices are still going up, so even relative newcomers like Hartmann may author the world’s most expensive book.

Most Expensive Pens in the World

Aurora’s Diamante

What better way is there to show your dedication to the (hand)written word than to own the world’s most expensive pen? Okay, there might be a few better ways to do so. In fact, the most expensive pen’s true purpose is likely to show off just how much money you make as the CEO of some recently bailed-out corporation.

Hey, at least it’s really good at showing off.

Diamante contains over 30 carats of diamonds and its creators, Aurora, aren’t shy about telling you it’s the only pen in the world to have so many. That’s why they make one every year.

The pen is topped with a diamond cabochon—a polished, not faceted, gem—and is further decorated with almost two thousand DeBeers-certified “4 C” gems on a solid platinum barrel. Even the nib is precious, being fashioned from 18kt gold.

The asking price for the most expensive pen in the world is not available to the public, but is suspected to be around US $1.28 million. The purchaser may have the Diamante personalized with their coat of arms, signature or portrait.

Montblanc, a fountain pen and luxury goods manufacturer, and Van Cleef & Arpels, a jewelry house, are the creators of the former most expensive pen, a writing instrument known as the Mystery Masterpiece. The unique work took over a year and a half to create by skilled artisans and if you hurry you can have your choice of three variations, set with 20 carats of sapphires, emeralds, or rubies, and accented by almost 840 diamonds. The three versions of the expensive pens were limited to three releases each and each of the nine pens sold for $730,000.

Montblanc’s Mystery Masterpiece