Fun facts
Statement:t: Smaugs horde has more gold than all the earth.
But in modern times:
"Their latest figure for all the gold in the world is 171,300 tonnes" - which is a LARGE horde of gold.
"....a cube made of 171,300 tonnes would be about 20.7m (68ft) on each side. Or to put it another way, it would reach to 9.8m above ground level if exactly covering Wimbledon Centre Court."
"But not everyone agrees with the GFMS figures.
Estimates range from 155,244 tonnes, marginally less than the GFMS figure, to about 16 times that amount - 2.5 million tonnes.
That bigger figure would make a cube of sides 50m (166ft) long, or a column of gold towering 143m above Wimbledon centre court."
Since the depth of the cave was no more than 1/2 a metre (half a hobbit) but lets say a 2 meter anway.So our regangle of floor gold would be 68 feet wide and 680 feet long and 6 feet deep - and that be pure 24 carret gold, not coins or plates or alloys etc. So raise that size at last 10% proably 200% for gold alloyed treasure and looking treasure - electrum looks just like gold to most people and in fact gold brass alloy as well.
And of course there is a lot more cold in mines yet unmined.
PS
After the Battle of Cajamarca, Atahualpa offered Pizarro to buy his liberty by filling the room where he was kept prisoner with gold and the two following rooms with silver, up to the level of the reach of his arm. The room was 22 feet long and 17 feet wide, while the red line marking the height of the Inca's reach, was 9 feet high. Atahualpa also offered to twice fill a smaller room with silver, asking for two months to do so
Much smaller than the lair of course, but again the floor looks like only a foot or three so of gold giving us 50 by 50 foot area of gold easily a foot or so deep.
The total collection of the gold, after being melted down into standard ingots, and before division amongst the Spaniards, amounted to 1,326,539 pesos de oro, worth 15,500,000 in 1847 US dollars. The silver amounted to 51,610 marks. Some of the most beautiful articles were saved for the emperor's royal fifth, which included vases, imitations of plants and animals, and a fountain
Apparently about 13,000 pounds of gold, or 130,000 gp from standard AD&D or 2 vorpal swords and some change.
If you go for 100 coins a pound it would be 23 vorpal swords.
Still 1 vorpal sword is enough to run an entire kingdom for several years, even at 23 swords to all the (taxable) gold in an empire.
The gold in modern terms (the ransom) as of today wold go for $196.23 milion dollars, or 1/403 of bill Gates banked/recorded wealth (as of today) or about 0.23% of his banked wealth. So if you have $100,000 in the bank is a few hundred dollars to him.
Or put another way bill gates could afford at least 200 or maybe even 2,000 vorpal swords if he was an AD&d character.
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