today we're answering one of cartoon's
longest standing questions just how much
money does scrooge mcduck have in his
money bin but first there's something
i've wanted to do since i was like age
seven taking a page out of your book
buddy let's do this
film theory
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hello internet welcome to you get it by
now and man if you were a child of the
90s hearing that theme song gives you
the nostalgia tingles ducktales was then
and still is great i mean it created the
childhood fantasy of swimming through a
literal pool of gold coins which now
that i've done it it's still awesome but
is it a workout old fat pad here didn't
know what hit him
now for those of you who aren't familiar
with the show ducktales stars donald
duck's uncle scrooge mcduck scrooge
mcduck the bajillionaire the point zero
zero zero one percent of one percenters
with a skyscraper literally filled with
gold that overlooks his city of duckburg
you know you're rich when attacks for
the wealthy is named after you that's
right the dutch word of the year in 2014
was dagobert duck tax actual legislation
named after dagobert duck the dutch name
for scrooge mcduck but it wasn't always
that way scrooge is a testament to the
value of hard work starting as a poor
shoe shine who got sick of being taken
advantage of by heartless customers
insisting that the only valid way to
acquire wealth is to earn it square and
avows that scrooge mcduck's word is as
good as gold and that grit and
determination paid off making him
officially one of if not the richest
cartoon character ever created according
to countless online lists including
forbes the business magazine he started
from the bottom and now is here so he is
quite literally drake or more accurately
a drake since drake is the name for a
male duck alright but let's get real
although everyone knows scrooge is
enormously wealthy the actual sum of
money he has is really unclear according
to the 1956 comic the second richest
duck scrooge is worth one multiple
jillion nine obscuatu matillion 623
dollars and 62 cents a number that gets
updated in the 12 comic series the life
and times of scrooge mcduck to five
multiple jillion nine impossibilian
seven fantastic a trillion dollars and
sixteen cents then if those numbers
weren't ridiculous enough for you in
season two episode six of the original
ducktales tv series the episode liquid
assets fenton crackshell scrooge's
accountant says that the mcduck money
bin contains 67 386 947 trillion 522
million dollars and 35 cents 35
oops 36 uh excuse me fenton i just said
he had five multiple jillion are you
telling me that he lost
323 fentillian dollars overnight come on
i think someone here forgot to carry a
one but all joking aside obviously none
of these are actually answering our
question how fat are scrooge's stacks in
real terms multiple outlets have tried
to calculate his worth they just don't
do that good of a job with it for
instance forbes magazine and that
richest fictional character list
estimated scrooge's earnings in 2007 to
be 28.8 billion dollars then bumped it
up to 44.1 billion dollars in 2011 due
to the rise in gold prices but they
never actually say where they got those
sorts of numbers and the website the
billfold uses cool equations but misses
out on just how deep scrooge's money bin
is so with a reboot of the series come
to disney xd on august 12th one that all
disney xd sponsorship of this episode
aside legitimately looks great seems to
stay true to the spirit of the original
series and has a very cool comic
aesthetic so as someone who grew up on
these cartoons i hope it does really
well check it out if you're interested
and the question still at large after
all of these years it is time to put my
theorist hat into the ring and answer
the age-old question just how much money
does scrooge mcduck have in that famous
money bin of his now obviously with the
disney xd series coming out i wanted to
start there unfortunately because it's
not out yet footage right now is limited
to the trailer the opening theme song
and a couple of spare teasers so i'm not
really able to get a good sense of the
dimensions inside the bin but that
doesn't mean we're out of luck not only
do we get a good general sense of the
size and shape of the bin from the
outside looking very similar to the
design from the original tv series the
trailer gives us our first major clue
and i do mean major i run a
multi-trillion dollar business this is
according to my research the first time
the series has put a real world number
to scrooge's wealth putting it in the
trillions but when it comes to money
that's a huge number over 20 times the
highest estimates forbes gave him so
today we won't just be testing out how
much money he has but also how well this
new reboot knows dear old scroogey
usually when i'm writing these theories
i need to scrape around for whatever
information i can find this theory
actually has the opposite problem for
the first time in the history of these
shows there's too much information the
statistics you see about the money bit
are constantly changing in both the
comics and the original series for
instance in the very first panel of the
comic only a poor man we see a depth
gauge in the money bin that reads the
building is 79 feet deep with coins and
bills not a shabby place to start in
another comic the pixelated parrot we
get a ton of information or more
accurately 90. tons of it since that's
supposedly how much cashola scrooge is
keeping in the bin and earlier in that
same comic we see him counting his money
again confirming he has nine billion
trillion and two one thousand dollar
bills stored in his vault we even get in
yet another comic that he has three
cubic acres of money obviously a joke
since an acre is a measure of area and
not volume if you did indeed have a
cubic acre you would have created a four
dimensional space a three-dimensional
space existing in a specific time frame
at that point screw how much money he
has the size of his wealth would
seriously be ripping through the laws of
the universe there are even blueprints
of the money bin in the 2001 comic the
beagle boys versus the money bin we
learned that the vault is actually a 13
story building that's 127 feet tall with
a large central chamber reserved for the
coins that would be great information
but the cube design is completely
different from what i'm most interested
in the tv show's been both in the
original series as well as the reboot
which we can see is taller and more
narrow so with so much conflicting
information what do we do well the way i
see it we go to the most reliable source
on the matter episode 15 of season 1 of
the original ducktales tv show the money
vanishes in it we see the criminal
family the beagle boys trick scrooge
into dousing his money with a
teleportation spray it's a plan that's
so successful they're able to clear the
vault of all its money leaving scrooge
penniless at the bottom 20 minutes and
40 seconds into that episode we get the
clearest shot of the complete volume of
the money vault that we ever get across
the entirety of the series and even
better scrooge is in it so if we're able
to identify his canon height we'll be
able to get a sense of scale to this
entire scene no weird exterior shots no
guessing about the accuracy of offhanded
remarks just one scene that shows us the
complete inside of the vault and gives
us the means to measure it a theorist's
dream so question one how tall is
scrooge thankfully this has an official
answer but you gotta dig deep for it in
the 1963 comic for old dime's sake we
see villainous magicka dispel put
scrooge to sleep and then measure him so
she can assume his identity and sneak
into the vault according to that panel
he's just about three feet tall or .91
meters now to translate that information
to the money bin we see in the
blueprints for the money bin that the
latter that leads to the bottom is
officially canon so if we know the
height of the ladder we can get an
accurate read of the entire building and
that scene from the money vanishes
between counting the rungs you can see
and estimating the ones that are either
just slightly off screen or aren't
clearly defined near the top of the
animation you get about 30 rungs total
on the ladder but how far apart are
those rungs to figure that out we have
to go back to the very first episode in
that episode we see scrooge using the
ladder to pull himself out of the bin
with each rung gap about a third of his
height with scrooge being three feet
tall that means each rung is about one
foot apart and the ladder as a whole
being just about 30 feet tall that seems
low to me so let's double check using
some of that other information we have
in the very opening seconds of the very
first episode of ducktales we see the
actual depth gauge to the vault and it
shows 70 deep seeing this i was
heartbroken but then i realized 70 what
70 feet it can't be because we see
scrooge in the background if we were to
measure his size relative to that depth
gauge he'd be 20 feet tall what is he
wario and remember that's with scrooge
further back in the shot so perspective
wise he's even smaller relative to the
depth gauge than he normally would be
and if three foot tall scrooge has 20
markings on the depth gauge that means
70 markings is only about 10 feet deep
of gold even less than before so
it would appear consistent scaling in
this world is going to have more issues
than teen vogue that's a magazine with a
lot of issues just so you know it was
meant to be funny but no the cringy puns
are just too real you guys so we have a
little bit of a dilemma here we have a
lot of conflicting informations and i
want to go big for today's theory i mean
disney xd paid me to do this episode and
as you all have heard on this show time
and time again they never invite me to
cool premieres or anything so this is my
chance to really impress them love me
disney xd love me so to be super
thorough and earn disney's undying awe
at the lengths that we go to on this
show i'm gonna power through every
conceivable calculation i can to see the
range of money that scrooge mcduck might
be hiding in this thing cue the clock
method number one depth gauge using the
depth gauge ruler we can photoshop that
guy out of its pile scale it
appropriately then use a few different
angles to figure out the rest of the
dimensions of the bin knowing that 20
marks on the gauge equals about three
real feet we get a money pile that's 10
feet deep 20 feet wide and 21 feet long
that's 4 200 cubic feet of coinage
method number two the ladder method
knowing scrooge is three feet tall we
can calculate the entry to the vault as
a circle with a diameter of about 8 feet
that allows us to measure out the walls
which become 20 and 32 feet respectively
couple those numbers with the pile
that's 30 feet of gold and we get a
stack of cash that's 19 200 cubic feet
method number three blueprints since
scrooge is always diving into his money
we know the actual depth of the coin
stack is about nine floors and a
basement level and with the whole
building being 12 floors above ground
and 127 feet tall from ground level each
floor is going to be about 10 feet 10
feet times 10 levels equals about 100
foot tall mound of money looking deeper
at the blueprints we can see the width
of the bin is just under 120 feet and
the length of the bin is 120 feet minus
30 feet for the office rooms making it
90 feet wide discounting two feet on
each side for the thickness of the walls
you get dimensions of 86 by 116 by 100
or nine hundred ninety seven thousand
six hundred cubic feet missed the number
four three cubic acres even though it's
a completely made-up number we can try
to extrapolate meaning out of scrooge
saying that he has three cubic acres of
money an acre is 43 560 square feet
meaning that if we assume each side of
this cube of money is one acre in area
the side length is going to be about
208.7 feet cube it and you get a volume
of 9 million 90 972 cubic feet so at 3
cubic acres scrooge's money bin would
have contained 27 million 272 960 cubic
feet in size this number will be really
fun when we do the final totals shiver
my shekels that is a ton of gold do you
love me yet disney well don't answer
just yet because this gamer truly does
have a guide to everything that's
another show on disney xd by the way and
true to that title we're going even
deeper down this rabbit hole because
what we've just calculated is the volume
of space in the vault across all the
different scales we have but that would
imply a solid block of money down there
and that's not precise enough this is a
bunch of coins randomly stacked coins
and as myself witnessed when hopping
into the ducktales vault for myself
there's a lot of air between those coins
so in my attempt to really impress you
disney i went and read a bunch of papers
with really boring sounding names until
i found the one from princeton a paper
with i gotta admit my favorite title of
all time some observations on the random
packing of hard ellipsoids watch out
george rr this is some page turning
stuff in this paper we learn or more
accurately i learn and tell you to spare
you the pain of having to read this
thing that the packing efficiency of
coins in a random pile is about 57
meaning that almost half that giant
money pile is gonna be nothing but air
that leaves our gold volume totals at
just flash it up on screen no one needs
to hear me list off all this stuff until
we get to the final numbers but you know
what we are still not done this is the
volume of the pile calculated in cubic
feet to find the value of this pile of
gold we need to know the weight of all
of it since gold prices are usually
listed per unit of weight so gold is
really dense thereby making it really
heavy at 1 206 pounds for a cubic foot
so i went ahead and calculated out the
weights and pounds for all four of our
methods which you see listed out on
screen right now
and at this point we should totally be
done right multiply by the price of gold
wrap this episode up earn disney's love
and respect for my super nerd dumb
forever booyah i'm walking the red
carpet at the next marvel movie premiere
because disney xd is so grateful at how
i was able to solve their scrooge mcduck
problem except here's the catch
these are of wardupwa pounds the very
long and very french name americans use
every day when we talk about how heavy
something is they're the pounds that
plague old fat pad every time he steps
on a scale it's the system where 16
ounces equals a pound but silver gold
platinum and other precious metals that
have lent their names to pokemon
installments are valued based on the
troy weight system it's completely
different when comparing the two systems
a troy ounce is heavier than an
avoidable ounce about 10 percent more
but here's where all these science and
mathematicians who created these systems
go overboard dumb well a troy ounce is
heavier than an avoidable ounce one troy
pound weighs less than one of wadupwa
pound because one troy pound is defined
as having 12 ounces not the usual 16 in
the other system i'm just i'm just done
nothing about this show is ever easy
hear that sound it is me
repeatedly banging
my
head against the desk so to put all of
this insanity to bed i converted all
four of our numbers to aboard apply
ounces then to troy ounces it's worth
noting that according to method three if
the vault's blueprints are to be
believed scrooge's vault would contain
twice the amount of gold that exists in
the entire world and that cubic acre
number yeah that's 55 000 times the
amount of gold on planet earth no wonder
scrooge has to go to the moon in the
video games and in the opening credits
sequence of the original series and
lastly with the price of gold currently
at 1
243 and 30 cents per troy ounce i was
finally
finally able to calculate how much gold
scrooge has cue the drum roll
guys are you kidding me let's step it up
we're trying to impress disney xd here
fine that'll do now if we went with
method 1 the most conservative route
where he only has 10 feet of gold for
our depth gauge calculations the money
bin would be filled with 52 billion 348
million 493 767.50
that is the lowest possible estimate of
scrooge's wealth and would still put him
as the fifth richest person on planet
earth just behind the creator of
facebook mark zuckerberg method two the
latter method where we saw scrooge's
wealth teleported away well that was
good payday for the beagle boys as they
would have wound up with the greatest
heist in history walking away with over
239
billion dollars allowing scrooge mcduck
to surge past the richest person in the
world bill gates and his measly 86
billion but from here on out the numbers
get crazy method three based on the
dimensions of the comics blueprints of
the bin scrooge would no longer be a
billionaire he'd be in the trillions at
twelve trillion four hundred thirty four
billion thirteen million five hundred
fifty two thousand four hundred ninety
dollars and ten cents if you include his
number one dime that puts him not only
past the richest people in the world but
also the richest companies in the world
don't get jelly disney you created him
and lastly method number four if he
truly had three cubic acres of gold a
preposterous statement it yields the
equally preposterous grand total of 333
trillion 927 billion six hundred thirty
three million eight hundred sixty three
thousand five hundred twenty seven
dollars and ten cents get this that's
more money than there is in the entire
world if you added together all the
banknotes coins and money deposited in
savings or checking accounts across the
planet earth the total is around 80.9
trillion dollars scrooge has four times
that amount and remember this is all
just his gold coins that's not including
any jewels gems paper money and real
estate he owns outside of that bin and
here's the craziest thing the new reboot
nailed it i was a bit skeptical when the
trailer said i run a multi-trillion
dollar business but there you go they
were right on the whole time so there
you have it once and for all the final
answer scrooge mcduck trillionaire the
hands down richest fictional character
ever not bad for a duck who started as a
shoe shine and with this reboot coming
to disney xd starting with a big launch
event saturday august 12th you can and
should watch along with me as scrooge's
wealth only continues to get bigger but
hey
that's just a theory a film theory
and
cuts
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