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In Hungarian, one can say "ehhez legalább $1000 kell, mint egy fillér". It means that a task will be expensive - $1000 might be enough to start but it might be much more, that is, $1000 might be like a penny compared to the final cost. A smooth-talker might use this phrase while they're trying to get money from someone for something.

Is there an English phrase/idiom that fits this?

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    We could say "It'll cost you $1,000 just for looking at it." But the penny part would be saying that if you didn't know the cost was high, like $1,000, well, you do know it ain't a penny, right? "It'll cost $1,000 if a penny." Meaning, if we agree it will will cost at all, it will cost a pretty penny...a lot.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Aug 19 at 4:08
  • I don't understand "A smooth-talker might use this phrase while they're trying to get money from someone for something" in this context. If that smooth-talker is trying to persuade someone that paying at least £1000 for something represents an attractive deal, why on earth would they want to scare the potential customer off by using an idiom that implies ...but the true final cost could be immeasurably higher than that ???
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 19 at 16:55
  • One may say "you must pay $1000 to see" (well-known poker saying meaning that players have to “pay to see” an opponent's hand.).
    – Graffito
    Commented Aug 20 at 11:08

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A seemingly large quantity of something can be contextualized as a small amount by describing it as a drop in the bucket. This phrasing puts an amount in the context of the total amount needed, which can make something that seems large in an absolute sense seem small in a relative sense. Someone trying to sell you a new refrigerator, for example, might say your whole kitchen needs remodeling, and that the cost of a new refrigerator is just an insignificant "drop in the bucket", so you might as well buy it now - that $1,000 for a new fridge is nothing compared the the $100,000 you might spend on a new kitchen.

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  • I'm familiar with a a drop in the ocean.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Aug 20 at 5:53
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There are many written instances in Google Books of...

(some sum of money is a/several...)
...thousand pounds if it's a penny
...or without the pronoun and repeated verb...
...thousand pounds if a penny

But a smooth-talking salesman would never use this expression to refer to his selling price, since his potential customer would hardly want to buy something with such an open-ended final cost.

Where the English expression might be used by a salesman is if he's trying to sell something for much less than £1000...

I can sell you one for as little as £250. But as you know, the true value is £1000 if it's a penny.

In my experience, the English use of £1000 if a penny essentially stands for at least a thousand. But it doesn't normally even imply ...and possibly several thousand, let alone ...and possibly as many thousands as there are pennies in £1000 (i.e. - £100,000). It just literally means If there's any value / cost at all, it won't be less than £1000.

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  • I didn't find those samples, thank you. It's possible that I mis-used "smooth talker" in my question - I meant more like a con man, not a salesman. The Hungarian expression definitely implies a minimum plus unknown extra. Sort of like "The expedition will cost $1000" when he really thinks $5000 but doesn't dare to say it, to avoid scaring the mark. The expedition is real and the mark may see some value from it but the cost might be much higher than imagined.
    – xxbbcc
    Commented Aug 20 at 1:57
  • To give you proper context, I'm translating a book to English (as a hobby project) and in one scene a young man is trying to convince his uncle to fund a treasure hunt for a diamond. The uncle is a rich penny-pincher and the young man is a sort of unscrupulous person (but not an outright criminal) - he says the above phrase as he's trying to get money.
    – xxbbcc
    Commented Aug 20 at 2:00
  • I don't think the English expression is like the Hungarian one as you define it. I'm not sure why the nephew would ask for £1000 if he knows for certain that's nowhere near enough. But maybe you mean the nephew knows he actually needs £10000, but thinks if he can get his uncle to agree to fund an initial £1000, he can ask for another £9000 later, since the uncle will already be "committed" to the project. The uncle might say "You need much more than £1000. This project will cost £10000 if a penny". But probably not in the real world today. It's a quirky dated turn of phrase anyway.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 20 at 15:21
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One often hears of spiralling costs:

spiral [verb]

...

  1. If debt or the cost of something spirals, it increases quickly in a way that cannot be controlled ...

spiralling/spiraling [adjective]:

  • the spiralling cost of legal services

[Longman]

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  • Thank you for the answer but I don't think this is a good match for the phrase. This doesn't seem to me something that one would use outside of formal texts or speeches.
    – xxbbcc
    Commented Aug 20 at 2:01
  • 'That's just the thin end of the wedge' could well be used; it's less formal, but used in other than just financial ventures. I'll make it an 'answer' if it's close enough.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Aug 20 at 15:11

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