We’ve already told you about the world’s most expensive haircut, a one-off service provided by stylist Stuart Phillips to retired millionaire Beverley Lateo, but Mr. Pillips’ usual fee of £150 (around $300) is far short of that commanded by some. The wealthy, after all, are willing to pay a handsome fee for a stylist who can turn the haircut in their mind’s eye into a reality. Let’s take a look, then, at the world’s most expensive salons.

Sally Hershberger

Sally Hershberger, known for her signature shaggy look, has salons in both downtown and uptown New York and a recently opened salon in Los Angeles. In the years she’s been styling, Hershberger has developed quite a list of celebrity clientele, including Sandra Bullock, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tom Cruise and even Hillary Clinton. She currently charges $600 for a haircut, but be sure to book your haircut well in advance. The waiting list is long and regulars get preference.

Frédéric Fekkai

Frédéric Fekkai, born in Southern France, has been cutting hair professionally for over twenty years. He now has eight salons, including locations in Soho, Greenwich and even Dallas. He’s been featured in a variety of magazines, from Menswear to Vogue, and his staff tests his line of hair care products in the same salons frequented by A-list celebrities like Live Tyler and Kim Basinger. A haircut at a Frédéric Fekkai Salon also costs $600.

Orlando Pita
(via bcause.org)

The priciest salon, though, is a private salon run by Orlando Pita. Unlike some other salons, Orlo Salon in New York City focuses solely on the haircut. Orlando has spent 25 years in the business and has styled for the likes of Madonna, Jennifer Connelly and Kirsten Dunst. Those who can manage to get an appointment at Orlo must be prepared to dish out $800 at the most expensive salon in the world.

Tequila, triple sec and fresh lemon or lime juice—these are the components of a standard margarita. The proportions may vary and orange liqueurs other than triple sec may be used, but these are the three main ingredients endorsed by the International Bartenders Association. What, then, are the ingredients in the world’s most expensive margarita?

Johnny Utah’s, a Western-style restaurant located in New York’s Rockefeller Center, features both a mechanical bull capable of rendering you permanently paralyzed and a mixed drink, The Vault, that can do the same to your wallet. Johnny Utah’s uses a $300 bottle of Herradura Suprema tequila to mix The Vault, along with grilled-lime juice and agave syrup. Notably missing from the mix is any sort of orange liqueur, though the syrup may make up for that. The drink costs $51 and was touted as the most expensive margarita in 2007.

Regardless of whether or not you consider The Vault to be a true margarita, the Riverside Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has flattened that record with the Riverside Grand Margarita. This exclusive drink uses freshly squeezed lime juice; Cuvée Speciale Cent Cinquantenaire, a special triple sec made to commemorate the Grand Marnier company’s 150th anniversary, and Patron Tequila Gran Platinum. Both the tequila and liqueur cost about $200 a bottle. The finished product costs $65, making it the most expensive margarita in the world.

In 1991, ground was first broken for the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project. The project was meant to reroute the chronically congested Central Artery (I-93) in Boston, Massachusetts, through a 3.5 mile tunnel under the city for a projected cost of $2.8 billion. Over the course of the project’s duration, the project became colloquially known as the “Big Dig” and its cost escalated to over $14 billion, making the Big Dig the most expensive public works project in the nation.

The I-93 tunnel. (Photo by Rene Schwietzke. Distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license.)

Originally conceived in the 1970s by the Boston Transportation Planning Review, official planning for the project didn’t begin until the early 80s. In 1987, US Congress passed a bill, later overriding a veto by President Reagan, appropriating funds for the Big Dig.

The project suffered from numerous setbacks. The tunnel itself was dug in an area of pipes, utility lines, subway lines and landfills. Additionally, leaks, findings of substandard materials followed by criminal arrests and even a fatal accident have all shut down parts of the project at various points in time.

The most expensive public works project in the US was supposedly finished at the end of 2007. However, as of January 2008, 237 serious leaks are being reported as going unchecked.

The town of Spa, Belgium, was known in medieval times for its chalybeate spring used to treat iron deficiencies. Since then, we’ve applied the name to any sort of medicinal water treatment, whether the healthful properties come from the iron in chalybeate springs or the trace elements of sodium and magnesium, potassium and calcium sulphates found in the seawater used in thalassotherapy. Of course, in modern times such treatments are generally a luxury afforded to those with some measure of surplus wealth. That’s certainly the case with the world’s most expensive spas.

Surprisingly, the three most expensive spas in the world are all located in the US. Of course, it’s no surprise that one of them is in California’s Bay Area. The Grand Luxe Facial, offered by Spa Radiance in San Francisco, includes Diamond Peel Microdermabrasian, which seems to involve sanding—er, exfoliating your face with tiny diamonds, Microcurrent Disencrustation to remove blackheads and sebum deposits, treating your eyes with caviar and LED light therapy to counteract sun damage. The process entire process takes three hours to complete and costs $750.

New York’s Mandarin Oriental offers an even longer treatment. Their Art of Indulgence mostly involves massages but also includes exfoliation and both a manicure and pedicure. At $1,034, this five-hour session makes Mandarin Oriental the second most expensive spa.

The most expensive spa in the world, however, is located in Florida. Available only to guests of the Hotel Victor in South Beach, Spa V offers a bath filled with nearly 350 gallons of Evian mineral water then showered with rose petals. The bath is creatively referred to as the Evian Bath and costs a phenomenal $5,000.

Paintball was originally inspired by Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game, a short story in which a Russian big-game hunter, bored with hunting animals, turns to hunting humans for sport. Since its inception in 1976, the game has exploded in popularity. Each year, over 10 million people play paintball in the US alone. It’s little [...]

Beanie Babies may have dropped out of the spotlight since their heyday in the late 90s, but that doesn’t mean they’ve disappeared entirely. While he nearly discontinued the line in 1999, Ty Warner was persuaded by popular demand to continue producing Beanie Babies. The formula that made Beanie Babies so popular was that each doll [...]

Despite being only the second most popular sport in the US, the first being football, baseball is considered our national pastime. To some players, the most important part of their arsenal is the baseball glove. It’s so important, in fact, that it can be difficult to convince a player to use a different glove. [...]

California’s James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Bridge, more commonly known as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge or just the Bay Bridge, is a five-lane toll bridge spanning 8.4 miles from San Francisco to Oakland via Yerba Buena Island. The bridge opened six months before the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1936. It didn’t become [...]

Picture this scene. It’s just a scant few weeks before Christmas, you have a grand burning a hole in your pocket, you’re having breakfast at New York’s Westin Hotel in 24 hours and you happen to know that, when that time comes, you’re going to want a bagel. Luckily for you, Executive Chef Frank Tujague [...]

Donut connoisseurs, rejoice! The world’s most expensive donut is also the world’s healthiest donut. Chefs Diet, a popular meal delivery service, offers two dozen of their hand-filled donuts for $50 USD.
What does that $50 get you? Chefs Diet’s Apple Caramel donuts have a mere 270 calories and 3.5 grams of fat, as opposed to the [...]

Rarity usually determines the value of a collectors’ item, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes the story behind the item sets its price. Such is the case with the 1894-S Barber Dime. Recently sold for $1.9 million, this Barber Dime is the most expensive dime in US history.
Barber, or “Liberty Head”, coinage was produced [...]

Bearing Liberty’s head on one side and a circular chain on the other, the most expensive US penny is the 1793 Sheldon NC-1 Chain cent. The chain’s fifteen links surrounding the words “ONE CENT” represent the unity of the fifteen colonies extant in the US at the time. The design was simple enough to allow [...]

Attending a prep school can give a teenager numerous advantages over their publically taught counterparts. They’ll have access to equipment and facilities that no public school can provide, they’ll be able to network with peers from influential families and they’ll be educated in a far more rigorous manner. These advantages can come with a hefty [...]

Sending a gifted child to a preschool that will nurture their natural talents is a long and involved process that has many parents pulling out their hair in frustration. In fact, tuition is one of the lesser burdens at the most prestigious of these preparatory schools. This fact is remarkable indeed when one receives a [...]

The constantly growing popularity of the National Football League has resulted in numerous awe-inspiring and expensive stadiums across the US. Competition to build the biggest and most expensive football stadium in the country couldn’t be higher. At the moment, the Dallas Cowboys organization plans on constructing the most expensive stadium in NFL history.
Designed by Bryan [...]

Updated: On Monday, February 26, 2007 it was reported that a 1909 Honus Wagner tobacco card, formerly owned by Wayne Gretzky, sold for $2.35 million US to an anonymous Southern California collector. This makes the card the most expensive baseball card ever purchased.
Originally issued as novelties for baseball fans and as [...]

by Hunter Davis
Recent reports from the College Board confirm the fact college tuition prices are not going to be decreasing anytime soon, or probably ever. Depending on the type of college, in 2007 students and their families should be spending on average from, $90 to $1,238 more than last year. Although attending college is steadily [...]

by Hunter Davis
It seems as though high society has, and will continue to have an appetite for incredibly expensive possessions. Members of the world’s financial elite, or billionaires for short, make no exception especially when dealing with the most expensive home in the world.

Real-estate mogul and timber baron Tim Blixseth will soon begin construction on [...]

The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing recently reported about the most expensive home sold in the United States during 2006, and the most expensive home turns out to be an English-style estate in Alpine, NJ which sold for $58 million US dollars.

From the Forbes article on the most expensive home sales of 2006
Approximately five miles [...]

Most people who rent do so either for convenience or because they do not have the capital to invest in their own personal property to live in. Real estate prices in certain parts of the country have forced many who live and work there to rent apartments and lease homes. It is no [...]

The accelerating popularity of college football in the past decade has led to much more expensive salaries for successful head coaches. As a college football program can in fact be one of the most lucrative sources of income for a university, coaches can be afforded a much more expensive salary than even their most [...]

In December 2004 the ceiling was raised for NFL expensive players’ already lucrative paydays when Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick signed a 10-year, $130 million dollar contract extension. The Virginia Tech alum’s deal includes a record-setting $37 million in guaranteed money and makes him by far the most expensive football player in NFL history, his [...]

Coin collecting is a hobby to many people who often begin collecting simply by saving noteworthy coins they have found in circulation. Old and rare coins are often more valuable than their printed amount. This may lead a curious person to ask, what is the most expensive coin in the world?
In 1933, 445,000 [...]

The annual Coldwell Banker College Home Price Comparison Index (HPCI) compares home prices of typical 2,200-square-feet homes. Applying the data from the HPCI to the home towns of 119 Division 1-A college football programs, yields the most expensive college town in the US.
For the second year in a row, Palo [...]

Stock price is determined fundamentally with the law of supply and demand. The most important factor that affects the value and appreciation of stock shares is a company’s earnings. What is the most expensive stock in the US?
The price for one Class A share of the most expensive stock in the US briefly topped [...]