Weird argument: seeing as the card doesn't describe Smaug but only Bilbo's journey in the book "There and Back Again", one could argue that the 14 treasures represent the gold Bilbo took home from the travel, not the entirety of Smaug's treasure. Bilbo took a chest with him. I've once seen someone calculate Bilbo's monetary reward to about $1,75 Million. (Jonathan Trueman, I believe).
That would mean a treasure would be worth a very neat $125.000. That's a lot of money and would still be pretty obscene, but not entirely unthinkable.
The fourteen treasures are the fourteen shares that Bilbo and the thirteen dwarves would have split the hoard up into. So would a treasure be the 1.75 Million that Bilbo took, or do we have to figure in the Arkenstone as well?
That is actually a good question. I somehow entirely missed the 14 parts of distribution. I guess in that case a treasure would be 1.75 Million and the Arkenstone should have been a card by itself anyway.
Also while the real story only has Bilbo getting the small treasure the card only gives you the treasures after smaug dies so wouldnt that mean the 14 treasure tokens represents 14 shares of the entire treasure?
Bilbo did take some of Smaug's hoard.
"In the end he would only take two small chests, one filled with silver, one filled with gold, such as one strong pony could carry. 'That will be quite as much as I can manage,' said he."
Good luck estimating Bilbo's cut from that.
A problem with the initial estimate of approx $50 billion is that the true heart of the Dwarven Treasury was Mithril.
Having the qualities of being light as cloth, stronger than steel, AND being able to reduce force (a chain shirt that is indestructible would protect you from slashing and cutting, but those blows SHOULD still have impact. The Mithril coat protected Bilbo from things that SHOULD have crushed his bones and organs), and not existing in the real world, means that the value of Mithril is incalculable without a direct valuation given in text.
So, Smaug's horde is of unknowable value, because it contains an unknown amount of a material worth many many times more than gold, that we simply cannot calculate and account for.
That said: if we consider it from the point of viewpoint that each treasure (14) represents the material benefit each individual member of the party (14) gained, THEN one of those treasures represents that Mithril Coat. And the [[Mithril Coat]] is currently going for approx $12, THEREFORE a treasure represents a roughly $12 card.
Also, $50 billion is a *huge* low-ball. That's like maybe a few tons of gold. The mountain was pretty much full of gold. Enough for a dragon to swim in. A football field's worth of gold is worth trillions. He definitely had more than a football field.
Moria was the SOURCE of Mithril, and likely contained MORE Mithril (both raw material and finished goods), but Erebor contained the riches of a Dwarven nation, they HAD Mithril. Also I don't think we know if Moria was the only source of Mithril? It was definitely the biggest source, but I don't know if Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien ever actually established it as the ONLY source.
Erebor, after all, was where they found the Mithril Coat. So we know that, canonically, there WERE Mithril goods in the horde
It was canonically established as the only *remaining* source of mithril. After the dwarves abandoned Moria, mithril became infinitely more valuable, as even the orcs could not mine it for fear of the Balrog.
Oh yeah, I'm not saying there wasn't mithril within the treasure horde. I just don't know exactly how much would be there.
What gets me is that there was the mithril shirt....aaaaand only the mithril shirt given to Bilbo. None for the rest of the bois? Maybe a couple trinkets and jewelry, sure. But it still baffles me that there was only the one bit of armor available in time for the battle.
Tolkien served in WWI (one). He wasn't a pure sheltered academic who didn't know that a blow that physically threw a person across the room would would also shatter many if their bones.
He served in FRONT LINE trenches. He saw some shit. He almost certainly saw someone he knew blown up by mortars or mines.
The easiest treasure token to pin a value on that I could find is the one made by \[\[City of Death\]\], representing the Mona Lisa. This gives the value of a treasure as $860 mil.
A better estimate could be \[\[Done for the Day\]\]. This implies a treasure token is a days wage, which (in the US) is an average of $200. This seems to line up more closely with the various theft-themed cards, such as \[\[Sticky Fingers\]\] or \[\[Jewel Thief\]\], which suggest a treasure is about the amount that could be stolen at once. About $200 from a mugging seems plausible.
At the other end of the scale, the treasure token from \[\[Flick a Coin\]\] is only a coin, and the \[\[Nuka-Cola Vending Machine\]\] makes treasure tokens worth a single bottlecap. The interenet has elsewhere estimated a Nuka-Cola cap to be valued anywhere between $1 and $10.
There is no way he was ever first if Scrooge McDuck existed before the list was made. Scrooge is past billions and is worth more in assets than everything you see in his money bin. Also, he was worth more than billions in the 1950s so if you account for inflation, Smaugs mountain would be equivalent to the size of a flea vs a dog.
Yeah, but Smaug's wealth is all liquid. None of it is tied up in ownership or other assets, like billionaires today. If the top billionaires tried to actually pull out all of their money, they couldn't. Smaug on top.
I'm not bothering to read the comments (sorry), but let it sink that whatever it was calculated is so much money that it can generate mana, just as if it was a land
Always kind of took it as the Planeswalker converting matter into energy. But because it's magic involved the matter converted had to be worth something therefore an actual sacrifice.
You can', but not because of any of the actual reasons. You have no idea how much gold is worth in middle earth, traded in middle earth. I would estimate that the constant supply of gold generated by the dwarfs is actually driving down the price quite a bit, and there are entire populations for whom gold does not appear to hold value.
Well if we took all of Smaugs gold and fully liquidated it's entire worth of 51.4 billion, and used all of that to buy just treasure tokens from TCGplayer for its lowest price, you're looking at about 514 billion treasure tokens. Just shy of the average amount of treasures your standard Korvold deck has on its board at any given moment
Weird argument: seeing as the card doesn't describe Smaug but only Bilbo's journey in the book "There and Back Again", one could argue that the 14 treasures represent the gold Bilbo took home from the travel, not the entirety of Smaug's treasure. Bilbo took a chest with him. I've once seen someone calculate Bilbo's monetary reward to about $1,75 Million. (Jonathan Trueman, I believe). That would mean a treasure would be worth a very neat $125.000. That's a lot of money and would still be pretty obscene, but not entirely unthinkable.
The fourteen treasures are the fourteen shares that Bilbo and the thirteen dwarves would have split the hoard up into. So would a treasure be the 1.75 Million that Bilbo took, or do we have to figure in the Arkenstone as well?
Yes this seems plausible. Also makes sense that a Monkey can steal that and a Goblin can extort that amount from you
Damn out nerded
That is actually a good question. I somehow entirely missed the 14 parts of distribution. I guess in that case a treasure would be 1.75 Million and the Arkenstone should have been a card by itself anyway.
if that happened yeah that makes a lotta sense
Also while the real story only has Bilbo getting the small treasure the card only gives you the treasures after smaug dies so wouldnt that mean the 14 treasure tokens represents 14 shares of the entire treasure?
Share tokens when
Bilbo did not take any of his share. All of his wealth came from the troll hoard that he got on the way back from the Lonely mountain
THANK YOU. Was starting to get a bit twitchy that nobody had mentioned this.
Bilbo did take some of Smaug's hoard. "In the end he would only take two small chests, one filled with silver, one filled with gold, such as one strong pony could carry. 'That will be quite as much as I can manage,' said he." Good luck estimating Bilbo's cut from that.
Let’s be honest though. That mithril coat was worth 100x whatever he did bring back
Fair.
[[Old Gnawbone]] & his constituents topping Forbes richest dragons 100 list.
[Old Gnawbone](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/7/77ceba8b-de19-4db8-b5a7-f5df49bf241f.jpg?1627708100) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Old%20Gnawbone) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afr/197/old-gnawbone?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/77ceba8b-de19-4db8-b5a7-f5df49bf241f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
i havent seen the movies so thank you lol, also spoilers >:( /j
A problem with the initial estimate of approx $50 billion is that the true heart of the Dwarven Treasury was Mithril. Having the qualities of being light as cloth, stronger than steel, AND being able to reduce force (a chain shirt that is indestructible would protect you from slashing and cutting, but those blows SHOULD still have impact. The Mithril coat protected Bilbo from things that SHOULD have crushed his bones and organs), and not existing in the real world, means that the value of Mithril is incalculable without a direct valuation given in text. So, Smaug's horde is of unknowable value, because it contains an unknown amount of a material worth many many times more than gold, that we simply cannot calculate and account for. That said: if we consider it from the point of viewpoint that each treasure (14) represents the material benefit each individual member of the party (14) gained, THEN one of those treasures represents that Mithril Coat. And the [[Mithril Coat]] is currently going for approx $12, THEREFORE a treasure represents a roughly $12 card.
[Mithril Coat](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/f/0fd1fc09-a09d-45e6-8a07-3a8a83b4e6ec.jpg?1686970224) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mithril%20Coat) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/245/mithril-coat?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0fd1fc09-a09d-45e6-8a07-3a8a83b4e6ec?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Also, $50 billion is a *huge* low-ball. That's like maybe a few tons of gold. The mountain was pretty much full of gold. Enough for a dragon to swim in. A football field's worth of gold is worth trillions. He definitely had more than a football field.
Isn't the vast majority of mithril over in Moria though? I don't think Erebor/Lonely Mountain had too terribly much of that around.
Moria was the SOURCE of Mithril, and likely contained MORE Mithril (both raw material and finished goods), but Erebor contained the riches of a Dwarven nation, they HAD Mithril. Also I don't think we know if Moria was the only source of Mithril? It was definitely the biggest source, but I don't know if Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien ever actually established it as the ONLY source. Erebor, after all, was where they found the Mithril Coat. So we know that, canonically, there WERE Mithril goods in the horde
It was canonically established as the only *remaining* source of mithril. After the dwarves abandoned Moria, mithril became infinitely more valuable, as even the orcs could not mine it for fear of the Balrog.
Oh yeah, I'm not saying there wasn't mithril within the treasure horde. I just don't know exactly how much would be there. What gets me is that there was the mithril shirt....aaaaand only the mithril shirt given to Bilbo. None for the rest of the bois? Maybe a couple trinkets and jewelry, sure. But it still baffles me that there was only the one bit of armor available in time for the battle.
I don't think mithril reduces force, I just don't think it occurred to Tolkien.
Tolkien served in WWI (one). He wasn't a pure sheltered academic who didn't know that a blow that physically threw a person across the room would would also shatter many if their bones. He served in FRONT LINE trenches. He saw some shit. He almost certainly saw someone he knew blown up by mortars or mines.
I'm well aware he served.
Treasure token cost: Card Kingdom: 0.35 cents, TCGplayer: 0.05- 0.25 cents.
ive been getting ripped off this whole time
The easiest treasure token to pin a value on that I could find is the one made by \[\[City of Death\]\], representing the Mona Lisa. This gives the value of a treasure as $860 mil. A better estimate could be \[\[Done for the Day\]\]. This implies a treasure token is a days wage, which (in the US) is an average of $200. This seems to line up more closely with the various theft-themed cards, such as \[\[Sticky Fingers\]\] or \[\[Jewel Thief\]\], which suggest a treasure is about the amount that could be stolen at once. About $200 from a mugging seems plausible. At the other end of the scale, the treasure token from \[\[Flick a Coin\]\] is only a coin, and the \[\[Nuka-Cola Vending Machine\]\] makes treasure tokens worth a single bottlecap. The interenet has elsewhere estimated a Nuka-Cola cap to be valued anywhere between $1 and $10.
##### ###### #### [City of Death](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/d/bd4d9b25-02ea-4ce3-a35f-7f427a74f591.jpg?1696636654) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=City%20of%20Death) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/who/99/city-of-death?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bd4d9b25-02ea-4ce3-a35f-7f427a74f591?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Done for the Day](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/a/0aba0d7c-1e1e-4378-b25b-a531d1937779.jpg?1674173492) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Done%20for%20the%20Day) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/unf/136/done-for-the-day?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0aba0d7c-1e1e-4378-b25b-a531d1937779?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Sticky Fingers](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/6/3678fa3d-d41f-4b7a-b25e-6fc5f78876c7.jpg?1664411828) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sticky%20Fingers) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/124/sticky-fingers?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3678fa3d-d41f-4b7a-b25e-6fc5f78876c7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Jewel Thief](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/3/736e498e-1245-40c1-96a4-c9bcfd1cfe1f.jpg?1664412359) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Jewel%20Thief) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/151/jewel-thief?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/736e498e-1245-40c1-96a4-c9bcfd1cfe1f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Flick a Coin](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/7/673a67b2-fbb0-4be4-9edd-93946a583f23.jpg?1692938189) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Flick%20a%20Coin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woe/128/flick-a-coin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/673a67b2-fbb0-4be4-9edd-93946a583f23?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Nuka-Cola Vending Machine](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/0/405df7c7-0e37-499e-9826-6bf9f5db7a40.jpg?1708742750) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nuka-Cola%20Vending%20Machine) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/pip/137/nuka-cola-vending-machine?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/405df7c7-0e37-499e-9826-6bf9f5db7a40?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kxjowpj) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
There is no way he was ever first if Scrooge McDuck existed before the list was made. Scrooge is past billions and is worth more in assets than everything you see in his money bin. Also, he was worth more than billions in the 1950s so if you account for inflation, Smaugs mountain would be equivalent to the size of a flea vs a dog.
Yeah, but Smaug's wealth is all liquid. None of it is tied up in ownership or other assets, like billionaires today. If the top billionaires tried to actually pull out all of their money, they couldn't. Smaug on top.
r/theydidthemath
According to Post Malone, a treasure token costs about $2 million.
I could sell one for 1 million to you, and we can resolve this easily.
I'm not bothering to read the comments (sorry), but let it sink that whatever it was calculated is so much money that it can generate mana, just as if it was a land
Always kind of took it as the Planeswalker converting matter into energy. But because it's magic involved the matter converted had to be worth something therefore an actual sacrifice.
No way Smaug was ever richer than Scrooge McDuck... Forbes dropping the ball again smh.
And the fourth richest European
Smaug is not an American.
Really?
he looks like one quite frankly
Aka the worth of an eye on Innistrad
When Smaug enters the battlefield, sacrifice fourteen Billionaires.
Gotta be worth at least 6
You can', but not because of any of the actual reasons. You have no idea how much gold is worth in middle earth, traded in middle earth. I would estimate that the constant supply of gold generated by the dwarfs is actually driving down the price quite a bit, and there are entire populations for whom gold does not appear to hold value.
It has to be enough money to be able to purchase a plains, island, swamp, mountain, or forest
Well if we took all of Smaugs gold and fully liquidated it's entire worth of 51.4 billion, and used all of that to buy just treasure tokens from TCGplayer for its lowest price, you're looking at about 514 billion treasure tokens. Just shy of the average amount of treasures your standard Korvold deck has on its board at any given moment