Comment Re:This explains it! (Score 1) 356
You can distill helium out of the air. There's some left. The cost would be around 10x the cost of neon, though. And if you have to ask what neon costs...
Actually, people do distill some helium out of the air. It comes out with the neon as "noncondensing gases" in the column. Those gases get sold to some buyers of neon, who don't mind some extra helium in the gas. Neon signs aren't too picky, iirc.