On the morning of Oct. 19, 2025, four thieves armed only with angle grinders smashed a second-story window at the Louvre and made off with jewels the museum and French officials describe as “priceless ...

The world’s most expensive substances command their prices for very different reasons. Some, like rare gemstones, are valuable because nature produces them in such limited quantities. Others, such as ...

A long-held lesson of economics is that the value of an item is what someone is willing to pay for it. Still, when it comes to auctions, that concept only partially explains the astronomical prices ...