Six Wacky Things $6 Can Buy You in the Modern Age

A quick guide to unconventional shopping

Feb 07, 2023

Are you tired of hearing about all the boring and practical things you can do with your hard-earned cash?

Bills to pay? Bleh. Cars to fuel? Walk, you lazy bum! Kids to feed? They should feed themselves!

It’s time to forget about “responsibility” for once. After all, you’re reading this article! I can’t think of anything more irresponsible to do right now.

So, without further ado, it’s time to jump into the land of six-dollar wonders, where your hard-earned doubloons can go further than you ever thought possible.

6 Wacky Things Money Can Buy

#6. A flight to Hawaii

On a lucky day in 2013, customers could purchase tickets all over the US from United Airlines for anywhere between $5 and $10. Some lucky few were reportedly even able to snag $0 tickets. Why? Because of someone who most likely got fired the next day for a pricey typo in the website coding.

#5. A Genuine Master’s Green Jacket

One lucky bugger walked into a pawn shop in Toronto in 1994, slapped down a fresh blue $5 Canadian bill, and bought himself a fancy new green coat. 22 years later, that exact jacket—from a 1950s golf tournament—sold for a hefty $139,000!

#4. A Russian Jet

Ever feel the need to win an argument by flying a MiG-31 at full force toward your mortal enemies, or Sharon at work? Well, in 2009, you had a brief chance as four fuselages from the jets, which were worth $3.7 million, sold for as little as $5. Blyat!

#3. A Box of Poop

In 2014, the makers of Cards Against Humanity—a raunchy hilarious card game—decided they had just about enough of the calamity of annual Black Friday sales. So they set out to do something different. They froze all products on their site and changed it to a premium box of “bullshit”. For a frugal six doubloons, 30,000 people received the gift that keeps on smelling in their mailbox—which contained genuine dehydrated cow excrement.

#2. Whatever the Heck This Thing Is

This “Bean creature…glows when charged with daylight.”

#1. My Newsletter

That’s right. Who would want a $137,000 auctionable item when you could keep reading amazing stories like this for the exact same price? $137,000 vs infinite laughs and curiosities satisfied sounds like a no-brainer to me, but I may be biased and have no brain.

If you’re cool, in the know, and want my ever-living respect and admiration, go to my Substack page and hit the upgrade to paid button, it’s $6 a month or $60 a year or $666 for my soul.

If not, don’t worry, everything on here is still no-paywall, 'cause I don’t like those very much.

On a more serious note: Thanks

To backtrack a second, I just wanted to give a note and say thanks.

I’ve debated adding a form of ‘support’ kind of subscription for a while, but never really felt this newsletter was professional enough to warrant one. So, I resigned to take the advice of Substack and wait until I had 1,000 people before I did it.

And last week, I resigned from that resignation.

Why?

Well for one, we’re almost at 900 of you weirdos. But the real reason is because of two awesome readers who both made a “pledge” to pay and left me notes that almost brought something humans call a tear to my eye.

I guess Substack introduced a new program for unpaid newsletters where readers could pledge an amount if the newsletter ever went paid.

Two of you did, and your personal notes were incredibly appreciated (sorry, there didn’t seem to be a function for me to reply back!).

So I deliberated for a week and tried to figure out a way to introduce a “going paid” email without sounding like a complete douche and eventually landed on this post, where I only reached 96.7% douchery.

Mission accomplished.

But in all honesty, I don’t make much money these days from my online writing, so any extra little bit really goes a long way over here in Taiwan.

If anyone wanted to help support me, I’d truly be grateful.

And as always, it’s still free for anyone who just wants an occasional chuckle or learn a new tidbit of interesting information every week.

Thanks, everyone!

Written by a very appreciative JJ Pryor.

PS. I decided not to share the names of the two who pledged because of privacy, but if you read this, feel free to reply to this email if you want me to list your names and a link to your own writing/website. I can always edit the article. Thanks again!