Griffin's $44.6M Fossil Paid $44.6 Million for a 150-million-year-old Stegosaurus Fossil
Griffin paid $44.6 million at Sotheby's for the stegosaurus fossil known as Apex.
By the Rich vs Reality desk July 2024 10 sources

Could have fed
407,306
hungry kids for a whole year.
To Griffin, it felt like $173.
Griffin paid $44.6 million at Sotheby's for the stegosaurus fossil known as Apex. The sale made it the most expensive fossil ever sold at auction at the time.
Reported by Financial Times, July 2024 and Forbes, July 2024.
$44.6 million could feed about 407,306 hungry kids three meals a day for a whole year. To Griffin, it cost what about $173 costs a typical American family.
$44.6 million could have changed these lives
Instead, it went on this.
407,306
hungry kids fed three meals a day for a whole year
No Kid Hungry: $1 can help provide 10 meals for kids. Three meals a day for 365 days is 1,095 meals, about $110 per child per year. Source
2,499
years of rent for a homeless veteran
At the U.S. median rent of $1,487 a month (Census, 2024), about $17,844 a year. Source
8,109
lives saved from malaria, most of them children under five
GiveWell estimates its top charities save a life for $3,000 to $5,500. We use the higher figure: $5,500, the cost through Against Malaria Foundation bed nets. Source
Or: 1.1 million people given clean drinking water; 1,250 families escaping domestic violence given a safe home for two years. Every rate and source.
Ken Griffin
$44.6 million
For everyone else, that's
$173
That's what it felt like to Griffin: the same share of a typical family's net worth.
Could have fed 407,306 hungry kids for a whole year.
Drag the seam between the two worlds.
Measured against a typical American household: $87,460 a year, $192,900 net worth.
The receipts
- Financial Times, July 2024
- Forbes, July 2024
- Net worth: Forbes, The World's Billionaires 2026
- U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2025 (Sept 2026)
- Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022
- No Kid Hungry, What your dollars can do
- GiveWell, How much does it cost to save a life?
- charity: water, How much clean water will my donation provide
- U.S. DOJ Office on Violence Against Women, Transitional housing
- U.S. Census Bureau median gross rent, via USAFacts
See something wrong? Send a source to hello@richvsreality.com and we will correct it.
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