A British transportation museum may have just purchased the world’s most expensive tires.
The Lincolnshire Road Transport Museum’s premier exhibit, a 1929 Leyland Lion bus, required new tires to make it roadworthy for the museum’s 50th anniversary. In order to replace the old and significantly cracked tires, the museum was eventually forced to order specialty tiles from America.
The Leyland Lion is the only surviving example of its model, the other three having been scrapped after serving as transport during World War II. This particular bus was used as a snowplow until it became the museum’s first acquisition around 1954.
The most expensive tires in the world cost the museum over $800 each. In comparison, normal bus tires cost around $250.
Expensive Tires
Expensive Trash Can
The world’s most expensive garbage cans are the work of contemporary pop artist Sylvie Fleury.
Created in a limited edition of twenty-five pieces, these garbage cans are made of steel pressed with gold leaf. Each one is stamped with “SF 2003” and its individual number on the underside. Number 25 was made available at Phillips de Pury & Company’s Contemporary Art Sale in New York on May 15th 2009.
Fleury’s other works include various “MINISKIRTS ARE BACK” paintings and an installation featuring a pyramid of Slim-Fast boxes.
The most expensive trash cans in the world are valued at $10,000-15,000.
Expensive Shampoo
We’ve already told you about the world’s most expensive soap, but that isn’t going to do anything for your hair. After all, why pay top dollar for soap and leave your hair at the mercy of an inferior product? Enter Alterna Ten, the world’s most expensive shampoo.
Alterna Ten contains exotic ingredients including African cacao extract, caviar age-control complex, photozyme complex with “color hold,” white truffle oil, Champagne grape seed oil, Bulgarian Evening Primrose and Arabian Frankincense. The shampoo is inspired by enzyme therapy, a process that uses enzyme supplements to treat conditions from digestive problems to cancer.
The world’s most expensive shampoo retails for around $60 for an 8.5 oz bottle. A shampoo and conditioner set may be priced over $400.
Expensive Lighter
French luxury firm S. T. Dupont—no relation to the chemical company—has been dealing in extravagance since 1872, when it was founded by Simon Tissot Dupont. Recently, for instance, they created a line of accessories inspired by the 2006 James Bond film, Casino Royale. This year, they’ve produced the world’s most expensive lighter.
Part of the company’s Prestige Collection, the Ligne 2 lighter comes in four distinct varieties. While the solid gold, white gold and the “Rose” pink gold and diamond lighters are all exquisite in their own ways, the Ligne 2 Champagne is truly exceptional. Made of 18-karat white gold and decorated with 462 diamonds (5.2 carats) of GVS quality, the Ligne 2 Champagne positively glitters with excess.
The most expensive lighter in the world can be had for $79,000. Its companion piece, a pen with another 502 diamonds, commands a mere $74,000 price tag.
Expensive Cheese
Cheese is likely the most popular dairy product in the world, a food that predates written history. In 2004 alone, over 18 million metric tons of cheese were produced worldwide. The world’s most expensive cheese, however, is only produced at one farm and at a very specific time of year.
Unusually, the cheese isn’t made from cow’s milk—the milk comes from moose! Moose House, a 59-acre moose farm located in northern Sweden, is where the cheese is produced from three foundling moose named Gullan, Haelga, and Juna.
The moose are unusually tame, which is the only reason Moose House owners Christopher and Ulla Johannson can collect milk for the cheese. Even then, they can only be milked between May and September and the process takes about 2 hours per animal, hence the outstanding price of the cheese.
The most expensive cheese in the world is 12% fat and 12% protein and about 660 lbs are produced annually. The Johannsons sell it to high end Swedish hotels and restaurants for about $500 per pound.
Expensive Potato
It’s not just the world’s most expensive potato; it’s one of the world’s five most expensive foods. It’s called La Bonnotte and it grows only on the French Isle of Noirmoutier.
The costly tuber owes its price to the fact that it must be harvested by hand and that its growing season lasts a mere ten days—from May 1st to May 10th. La Bonnotte is so fragile, in fact, that it would’ve gone extinct between World Wars I and II if not for a group of devotees to the pricey potato.The potato’s flavor is said to be both earthy and salty, owing its complexities at least partially to the presence of algae and seaweed in the soil.
La Bonnotte can be purchased from ritzy restaurants in France and the Netherlands until around May 15th. While normally sold for around €70 per kilo (US $45 per pound), the potato has been sold for up to €500 per kilo (US $322 per pound).