World’s Most Expensive Magazines

How much would you be willing to fork over for a subscription to a magazine about quantitative finances? How about an exclusive art mag? How about a women’s mag with a cover made of gold and diamonds? Forget the ten to twenty dollars you’d pay for a subscription to Maxim, Cosmo or Rolling Stone—we’re talking about the most expensive magazines in the world.

Wilmott – $650 for six issues
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.


FINE Exclusive – €500 ($679.45 US) annually
FINE Magazines, headquartered in Finland, publishes exclusive fine wine magazines that are distributed to over eighty-five countries through carefully selected partners. Their main magazines, including several regional FINE magazines and FINE Champagne, are not available for subscription, but digital copies can be purchased through their website. FINE Exclusive, on the other hand, is only available through subscription—and even then you’ll need an invitation.
A FINE Exclusive subscription includes not only the magazine—which features more of the top notch content that makes FINE “the world’s leading publication focused on fine and rare wines”—but also the Fine Wine Drinkability Index and access to the world’s first wine concierge service.
Unfortunately, scant information is available about the frequency of their publication.

Nomenus Quarterly – $6,500 for one issue
Nomenus Quarterly features previously unpublished photographs, paintings and other artwork. While normally priced around $2,500 for a single issue, the magazine’s founder, editor in chief and photographer, Erik Madigan Heck, has increased the price of the magazine’s seventh issue to $6,500 while reducing the print run from fifty copies to a scant ten. Aside from Heck, the issue features work by Anselm Kiefer, Lucian Freud, Adam Fuss, the Costume Institute and a tribute to the menswear of Ann Demeulemeester.

Kohl – $10,000 for one issue
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 issue in the world. The cover, which features sexy Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif, was handmade with 91 grams of gold and 622 diamonds. Gold leaf was also applied by hand to the cover as part of an 86 hour process.
The luxurious cover was displayed in Damas stores until a gala event in October 2008 where it was auctioned. Proceeds from the sale of the world’s most expensive magazine were donated to the Rashid Pediatric Therapy Centre in Dubai.
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