Most Expensive Magazines

How much would you be willing to fork over for a subscription to a magazine about quantitative finances? Forget the ten to twenty dollars you’d pay for a subscription to Maxim, Cosmo or Rolling Stone. Quantitative analysts who want to keep up to date in their chosen profession may need to pay up to nearly $700 for the most expensive magazine subscription in the world.


Published out of the UK, Wilmott magazine offers information about the most recent research, innovative financial models, reviews and in-depth analysis. Of course, you may need a PhD in mathematical finances to understand any of it. Each issue is an eleven inch square, giving you the feeling that you’re holding the teacher’s copy of a textbook, with all the answers in the extended margins.

Individual subscribers pay only $325 for a year-long subscription while institutions pay $650. Subscribers to the expensive magazine are also inducted into the Wilmott Book Club, giving them discounts on many quantitative finance and popular science books.


For the most expensive single issue, however, we’ll have to turn to Kohl magazine. The United Arab Emirates’ one and only women’s lifestyle and fashion magazine, Kohl is targeted at expatriate Asian women.

Publisher ITP teamed up with Damas, a UAE jeweler, to create the stunningly bejeweled cover for the single most expensive magazine in the world. The cover, which features sexy Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif, was hand-made with 91 grams of gold and 622 diamonds. Gold leaf was applied by hand to the cover as part of an 86 hour process.

The luxurious cover will be displayed in Damas stores until a gala event in October 2008 where it will be auctioned. Proceeds from the sale of the world’s most expensive magazine will be donated to the Rashid Pediatric Therapy Centre in Dubai.