Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey.
If you’re a Disney fan, or a Ducktails fan, or you were a child at some point, you’ve
probably imagined what it would be like to dive into Scrooge McDuck’s amazing pool
of gold.
Frankly, it looks glorious.
But just how rich is that guy?
Well, there is no one real answer, but in this video, we’ll look at various estimates
of his wealth, and try to use the method we think is best.
Make sure to let us know what YOU would do with a pool full of gold in the comment section
down below.
Now get ready, it’s time to ask the question: How rich is Scrooge McDuck?
The first source to look at for his wealth is Scrooge’s comics and shows.
I could simply quote “The Second Richest Duck”, a comic from 1956 starring Scrooge
McDuck.
In the comic, it is stated that the total value of all his mines, mills, money bins,
and so forth is one multiplujillion, nine obsquatumatillion, six hundred and twenty-three
dollars and sixty-two cents.
But there are a few problems with this.
For one, the number changes from comic to comic, and then changes more throughout the
Ducktales show.
But also, those straight up aren’t numbers.
So that doesn’t really help.
Another option is to look at Forbes; they publish a list of the “fictional 15”,
the 15 richest fictional characters.
The problem is… their numbers aren’t exactly consistent.
In 2005, Scrooge supposedly had a net worth of 8.2 billion dollars.
But as of 2013, he was assumed to have 65.4 billion dollars.
While the price of gold did rise, during that time, it didn’t go up that much.
And also, this estimate seems incredibly low considering he has piles of gold coins.
It’s almost as if Forbes didn’t take their piece on fictional characters 100% seriously…
So, it looks like we’re stuck doing it the old-fashioned way: With a bit of research,
some math, and a whole lot of guessing.
It seems that in order to determine how much money he has, the closest thing we can do
is look at his vault with his pool of gold and determine just how much gold is there.
Thankfully, a lot of the math has already been done for us, with a few different sources
having calculated his wealth.
The folks over at thebillfold.com did a pretty good job, judging the height of the gold piles
based on Scrooge’s height and extrapolating from there.
Unfortunately, they had a few errors in their numbers.
For one, they assumed that Scrooge was the height of a normal duck, when really, according
to the comics, he’s 3 feet tall.
They also grossly underestimate how high Scrooge’s vault is.
To be fair, any calculations about this are, of course, very rough, due to the several
inconsistencies throughout the comics and the shows.
And that’s understandable, considering it’s a children’s show, not a high school math
class.
So, we’re on the right track, but not quite there.
Looks like we’re gonna have to dive deep, think back to calculus class, and pray that
– oh thank god Game Theorists did a video on this.
The Film Theorists expanded on Thebillfold’s work to the point where I’m pretty sure
MatPat is a madman.
Their video goes into everything from avoirdupois pounds to rantings about measuring gold in
4 dimensions.
It’s intense.
But it DOES give us a much more in-depth calculation, using Scrooge’s proper height of 3 feet,
using the blueprints found in the show, even taking into account the fact that a pile of
coins weighs less than a solid lump of gold.
As well as a bunch of other things.
It looks at the conflicting information to bring us a few different potential numbers,
ranging from 52,348,493,767.50 to 333,927,633,863,527.10, which is more money than there is in the world.
Yowza.
BUT, I thought I’d take it one step further just to give me one number to plant our flag
in.
So, if we take the four numbers calculated by the Game Theorists and find the average,
we can come up with what I would argue is the closest possible approximation of his
wealth.
(editors, please show: 52,348,493,767.50; 239,307,400,080; 12,434,013,552,490.10; 333,927,633,863,527.10)
Take these 4 numbers, add them together, divide by 4, and voila!
Scrooge McDuck has, drumroll please…
86 trillion 663 billion, 325 million, 827 thousand, 466 dollars and 18 cents.
And now we return to our question: How Rich is Scrooge McDuck?
Well, we don’t exactly have one certain answer.
We have some made up numbers from the comics which we can probably disregard for now.
Forbes and Thebillfold gave it a try, but they don’t seem to have come close.
However, with a little math and a whole lot of guess work, we arrived at one number that
combines the conflicting information throughout his media to give us one number: 86 trillion
663 billion, 325 million, 827 thousand, 466 dollars and 18 cents.
It should be noted that this is just looking at his gold, and not at his various properties
and assets, but their value would likely be negligible compared to the value of his gold
anyway.
Plus, he’s a fictional character.
So let’s not stress out too much about it.
Bottom line: the guy was loaded.
Thank you for watching Life’s Biggest Questions, I hope this was interesting and informative,
and maybe even inspired you to look into it further on your own.
If you liked this video, please thumbs up and subscribe to the channel down below.
While you’re down there, let me know which of these sources you think got the closest.
Until next time, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey with Life’s Biggest Questions, wishing you
the best of luck, on your quest for answers.