Priceless: How Much Are You Really Worth?

Have you ever wondered how much you’re worth? No, we don’t mean psychological self-worth and self-respect – we mean in terms of cold, hard cash, how much could you sell your body for? Below, we break down three separate methods to determine how much money you could get from selling yourself. You might be surprised by the results.

Method Number One: Use Your Chemical Breakdown. Your body is comprised of approximately 63 percent oxygen, 18 percent carbon, nine percent hydrogen and 10 percent other elements. Using current prices of these elements, the body of a 180-pound person would sell for about $500 to $600, depending on exact chemical makeup. That’s not very much money! The takeaway: don’t sell your body by the elements.

Method Number Two: Sell Your Body in Parts. The next idea to approach would be to sell your body in parts. The easiest way to do this would be to sell to the black market, which is much more popular than most people realize. A pair of pristine kidneys can go for as much as $200,000, and an entire body of perfect parts sold separately could be worth as much as $43 million. However, consider the following: tattooed skin, livers riddled with alcohol abuse and lungs of smokers are much less useful than those that have not been through a heap of drug use. If you fall into one of those categories, then you should probably consider the next method.

Method Number Three: Sell Your Entire Body. The final method of determining just how much you’re worth would be to sell your entire body. A corpse can be sold for anywhere from $80,000 to $200,000, depending on its condition. However, if you are a full organ donor, it is nearly impossible to predict what exactly will be done with your body after you die. The next option would be slavery, which we can all agree is immoral, but for the sake of this thought experiment, let’s explore. When slavery was legal, a slave could be sold for about $800, which, when taking inflation into account, would be about $23,000 today. The website humanforsale.com can help predict how much you would be worth in this scenario. So, how much are you really worth? We’ll leave that up to you to decide.