10 Things that Cost More than the Washington Post

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post today for $250 million. That sounds like a high price, but it may not be all that. Bezos didn’t even buy the Post through Amazon, but out of his own mad money.

Here are a few things that cost more than the Post.

1. Tumblr. Yahoo bought the amateur-driven dot-com in May for $1.1 billion. Tumblr is mostly random musings, animated gifs of cats and whatnot.

2. Alex Rodriguez. A-Roid has broken the record for highest paid baseball player twice, once with the Texas Rangers and then again with the New York Yankees. His 2007 deal with the Yankees was reportedly worth $275 million. He’s now facing a huge ban for using performance-enhancing substances.

3. John Carter. The 2012 Disney flop reportedly cost $300 million to make. Disney could have just bought the Post and, well, they’d still have lost money.

For some reason, no one has bothered to make animated gifs of John Carter.

4. Zillow.com. The real estate web site went above $250 million today on news that President Obama would stop by for an online Q&A.

5. Divorcing Mrs. Rupert Murdoch. NewsCorp’s Rupert Murdoch’s divorce from his second wife, Anna, reportedly cost him $1.7 billion in 1999. Murdoch remarried 17 days after that divorce was final, and is now divorcing his current wife, Wendy Deng. Once that’s done and dusted, her lawyers may be able to buy the Post off of Jeff Bezos.

Honorable mention: Heather Mills asked for $250 million when she and Sir Paul McCartney split, but ended up getting about $48 million plus $70,000 per year to cover child care expenses.

6. This Painting. Qatar used some of its oil profits to buy Cezanne’s The Card Players for more than $250 million last year, which was the highest price ever paid for a work of art. Chances are, the painting will increase in value over time while the Post may head for Newsweek territory.

7. Evernote, 8. Pinterest and 9. Facebook. All three of these online startups feature user-generated content, have suspect revenue models, and have been valued north of $1 billion.

10. Making you think Obamacare is wonderful. The federal government will reportedly spend close to $700 million to convince Americans that Obamacare, a law the majority never supported and which is contributing to more than 90% of jobs created since 2009 being part-time jobs, is good for them.