Opening a can of wyrms:

[scott_sanford]

The Forbes Fictional Fifteen is out, showing us that just because you work for a finance magazine doesn't mean you lack a sense of humor. This year they let us peek behind the scenes and show how to calculate the net worth of dragon hoards, which is admirably nerdy and math-heavy. (Anything that involves reading J.R.R. Tolkien and a calculator sounds like something for us.) But if you just want the bottom line: Smaug is worth not less than $8.6 billion.

Comments

[seawasp]

Apparently the fool can't read past the D&D manual.

Smaug wasn't 64 feet long. Add AT LEAST an order of magnitude to that. When he became pissed off, his coming LIT UP THE ENTIRE END OF A large LAKE, turning it gold at night. The wind of his passage BLEW DOWN buildings meant to withstand storms. And when he fell, he ruined an entire city with the impact of his fall.

And as multiplying the linear dimensions by 10 increases all volumes involved by a factor of 1,000 (10 cubed), that would make him worth in the range of $8 to $10 *TRILLION*, sitting on a mountain of gold so massive that the floor must have been magically reinforced.

[kengr]

No, only by a factor of 100. Your arguments would make the pile 10 times longer and wider, but would not make it 10 times *higher* (their argument for height was based on how tall Bilbo was.

So Smaug would only be worth $800 billion to $1 trillion.

[seawasp]

I'll concede that. Still, they were seriously undervaluing the old lizard's trove, and that's just basing it on volume.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Very few responders on the Forbes board argue that their favorite character is assessed too high. The only exception I found on my browse through the list was Richie Rich, whose family is quite wealthy but whose individual assets probably don't make the list. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark, for example, are both argued to be wealthier.

[kengr]

The link to "net worth of dragon hoards" is broken.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Fixed.

[dufemuse.livejournal.com]

Keep posting stuff like this i really like it

[sasucall.livejournal.com]

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[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

You never know when you may need to calculate the street value of a dragon hoard.