$1 → $1M · 5 tiers

Drinking glass.

Glass is one of humanity's oldest manufactured materials. Five glasses, 4,500 years apart in craft and intention.

Plastic disposable cup

Material: Polypropylene, 250 ml, single-use, the kind that comes in a sleeve of 50 from a budget supermarket.
Function: Holds liquid. Cracks if you grip too hard. Ends up in the recycling — or, more honestly, the bin.
History: The disposable plastic cup was patented by Hugh Moore in 1907 — for sanitary water dispensers in trains. He named the company 'Dixie' after a doll factory in the same building. Made with scrap but with a century of accidental empire.
What bumps the price: Bamboo fibre instead of PP plastic (+$0.30), branded with a logo (+$0.20), printed with cheeky one-liners (+$0.40).

Material: Lead-free machine-blown soda-lime glass, 350 ml, 6-piece set, dishwasher-safe.
Function: Whisky on the rocks. Iced coffee. Looking at the light through the bottom of the glass after a long day.
History: Soda-lime glass production was industrialised in 1903 with the Owens automatic bottle machine. One machine could make as many bottles in a day as 60 hand-blowers — the original mass-production miracle.
What bumps the price: Hand-cut rim (+$15), monogrammed engraving (+$20), in matched set of 12 instead of 6 (+$80).

Material: Hand-blown lead-free crystal, 860 ml bowl, 28 cm tall, paper-thin rim, single-piece pulled stem.
Function: Channels Bordeaux to the right part of the tongue. Makes a $40 bottle taste like a $200 one. Survives the dishwasher only if you're brave.
History: Riedel started shaping wine glasses to grape varieties in 1973. They worked with sommeliers to map how the glass shape changes which papillae the wine hits first. The Bordeaux glass is the most-copied design in the world.
What bumps the price: Hand-numbered limited run (+$200), individually packed in wood (+$80), full 12-glass set (+$2,500).

Material: Hand-pressed lead crystal sculpture-glass, 24 cm tall, depicting eight nude bacchantes in relief around the body, signed and numbered by the Lalique workshop.
Function: Display-only at this price tier. Showing it filled with wine is its own kind of statement.
History: René Lalique designed the Bacchantes in 1927; the model has been in continuous production since. Each piece is hand-finished by a master craftsman; the polishing alone takes 16 hours.
What bumps the price: Pre-1945 original mould versions (+$8,000), historic provenance (+$5,000), signed by René Lalique himself (+$60,000).

Material: 4th-century Roman dichroic glass cage cup. Embedded gold and silver nanoparticles roughly 70 nanometres across; appears jade-green in reflected light, ruby-red when lit from inside.
Function: British Museum exhibit only. The colour-changing effect was an accident the Romans could never reproduce again.
History: The Lycurgus Cup is the oldest known example of dichroic glass and the world's earliest demonstration of nanotechnology — 1,600 years before the field had a name. Modern researchers have tried to reproduce it; nobody has hit the exact ratio of gold-to-silver nanoparticles the Roman glassblowers stumbled on.
What bumps the price: Provenance from a Royal collection (+$300K), original Roman silver-gilt rim (+$500K), display in a climate-controlled glove-box that pumps argon to prevent micro-corrosion (+$120K).