The 12 Most Expensive Materials In The World

For many centuries, lots of people have believed that gold is one of the most expensive materials in the world. This, however, is absolutely wrong.

Bright Side has compiled a list of materials of value, rating them from the lowest price to the highest one. Let’s skip ahead a bit: gold is not even in the top three here.

12. Saffron — $11 per gram

This spice is unique, combining fantastic taste and great health benefits. Its production process is highly time and effort consuming, but the flavor and healing properties of saffron are unequaled by any other spice.

11. Gold — $56 per gram

The most well-known precious metal that no woman can supposedly do without. Gold has been worshipped from time immemorial, and all things beautiful are inevitably compared to it.

10. Rhodium — $58 per gram

A metal of the platinum group and an extremely rare one. To give you the big picture, let’s say that one ton of earth crust contains about 0.001g of rhodium.

9. Platinum — $60 per gram

This is a rare and precious metal of a silvery steel color. Like gold, it’s highly resistant to acids, alkali, and other compounds.

8. Rhinoceros’s horn — $110 per gram

Although science has proven that rhino horn has no medicinal properties, they are still considered valuable because of this property and as great knife handles. Because of poachers, poor rhinos are already on the verge of extinction.

7. Plutonium — $4,000 per gram

A heavy yet fragile radioactive metal of a silvery-white color. Its uses vary from production of nuclear weapons and fuel to a source of energy for spacecrafts.

6. Painite — $9,000 per gram

This stone is so rare that very few people actually know it exists. It’s a mineral of an orange or reddish-brown color, and it was only discovered 65 years ago. There are just a couple hundred of these stones in the world today.

5. Taaffeite — $20,000 per gram or $4,000 per carat

A precious stone of a violet, pink, red, or white color. It is a million times rarer than diamonds, making it legendary. However, despite its uniqueness, it’s not very popular when it comes to jewelry — and that’s probably the reason why it’s relatively inexpensive.

4. Tritium — $30,000 per gram

This gas is used in lighting — for example, in tritium illumination. It costs about $15 million to produce a pound of tritium.

3. Diamond — $55,000 per gram

The most famous precious stone on Earth, and the best friend of any lady.

2. Californium — $25-27 million per gram

The most expensive chemical element ever. It has been synthesized only once since its discovery in 1950.

1. Antimatter — $62.5 trillion per gram

The most expensive substance on Earth. Production of one milligram of positrons costs about $25 million. In theory, we will be able to use antimatter as fuel for spacecrafts in the future. But the drawback today is that to make just one gram of it, all of mankind will have to work for about a year without rest.

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