Five things that are cheaper than sex.com

It seems like a pretty steep price to pay for a website with terrible search engine recognition (it doesn't even come up in the first page of results) and no current discernible purpose (it's basically just a bunch of links right now), but the domain name sex.com sold at auction...

By Jef Otte

February 22, 2011

Audio By Carbonatix

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It seems like a pretty steep price to pay for a website with terrible search engine recognition (it doesn't even come up in the first page of results) and no current discernible purpose (it's basically just a bunch of links right now), but the domain name sex.com sold at auction for $13 million in November, a price the Guinness Book of World Records recognized today as the most money ever paid for a domain name. Particularly considering that it seems like people googling porn would be quite a bit more specific about their search terms (we typically go with "furry exhibitionist coprophilia asphyxiation"), the purchase doesn't seem like the best investment -- so we got to thinking: What else could you buy with $13 million? 5. A Mercedes Benz encrusted in diamonds Prince Waleed, the Saudi Arabian royalty who owns this car, charges $1,000 just to touch it, but you could own it for the price he paid: a cool $4.8 million. With $13 million, you could own probably three of these things, if you assume the diamond-plater would cut you a discount for buying in bulk. 4. Thirteen watches made out of diamonds Continuing in the things-made-out-of-diamonds vein, you could also have thirteen of these: the hideous Chopard Super Ice Cube, which looks like it should both tell time and shoot lasers. For $860,000, you could also spice it up with a Louis Moinet Magistralis, a watch that has a piece of a lunar meteor in it, for some reason. It really shouldn't be this easy to spend $13 million on watches. 3. Pretty much every famous house in Colorado If you combine the prices for the Sleeper House (last sold for $1.5 million) the house JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in (currently going for $2.3 million) and Cableland (built in 1987 for $7 million), you'd still have a couple of million left over to fill out your solid-gold goblet collection.

2. Several private jets Especially if you're okay with buying used, there's almost no jet that's out of your price range when you have $13 million. In fact, most used private jets seem to fall within the $500,000 to $2 million range, meaning you could get hooked up with a whole fleet -- pretty much the definition of mobbin' deep.

1. Close to 1,000 tigers Turns out, for $13 million, you could have a shitload of tigers, at least if you buy them from buytigers.com, which bills itself as the "first real tiger store online;" there, you can get your hands on one five-month-old female tiger (and accessories) for the low, low price of $13,400. This would be particularly impressive, considering the total amount of tigers in the wild by many estimates currently hovers somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000, meaning you'd be in possession of a considerable chunk of the world's total tiger population. Then you'd be like, "Who's a pimp now, Jake Jabs?"

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