A very interesting post.
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358
It is not merely the astronomical price tag but the clever detective work that figured out what lead to the crazy price and is a good example of how algorithms can go wrong.
Finally it makes for a nice linear algebra problem: Find the least n where the prices reaches $23 million, given that
[tex] x_{n+1} = 0.9983 y_n, y_{n+1} = 1.270589 x_n[/tex]