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Mr. Arkenstone (isaac)
Dor-Lomin
Sep 13 2015, 1:46pm
Post #1 of 33
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What if Bilbo would had kept his share of the treasure?
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I know is not in the nature of hobbits, but, If he decided to do that, what would he have done with all that gold?
A hobbit fortress city like Erebor, or Minas Tirith? Mini Tirih perhaps?XD
The flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true
Survivor to the battle for the fifth trailer
Hobbit Cinema Marathon Hero
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Otaku-sempai
Elvenhome
Sep 13 2015, 2:31pm
Post #3 of 33
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First off, it wouldn't have come to that. "There was, of course, no longer any question of dividing the hoard in such shares as had been planned..." But even so, Bilbo could have been immeasurably wealthy by Hobbit standards. I tend to think that he might still have given much of it away; however, Frodo would certainly have been financially secure.
For the sake of argument, let's say that Bilbo did receive his full, promised fourteenth share. He would have needed to have a vault constructed to hold it all. perhaps located in the Party Field. Maybe he would periodically enter just to look at it, then to swim in it. He starts sending Frodo and his companions off on wild adventures. Bilbo becomes Scrooge McDuck!
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Sep 13 2015, 2:33pm)
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Sep 13 2015, 3:41pm
Post #4 of 33
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The influx of gold into the Shire causes hyperinflation (as happened in Europe, when Europeans made off with so much gold and silver from Latin America). There's a banking crisis, from which the hapless hobbits are only saved by the arrival of a dragon?
~~~~~~
Join us for a read-through of The Two Towers (Book III of Lord of the Rings) in the Reading-Room - 13 September- 29 November 2015.
Schedule etc: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=864064#864064
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Bracegirdle
Doriath
Sep 14 2015, 3:48am
Post #6 of 33
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Or he could just hire a ton more Bounders . . .
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For those unfamiliar Minnehaha is a creek and falls and park in Minneapolis where I was born at a very young age.
Or - also a Native American woman in H.W. Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha
Your Half-firien made me toot! 
*changing shorts*
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."
-John Wheeler
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Bracegirdle
Doriath
Sep 14 2015, 3:58am
Post #7 of 33
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all the treasure taken from the Stone-trolls hoard.
He didn't think it proper to keep the spoils of such rapscallions.
It's a whole stone's throw to the Stone Trolls hole. (3 times real fast!) 
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."
-John Wheeler
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Sep 14 2015, 8:15am
Post #8 of 33
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"Minneapolis" sound like idea fruit for young hobbits to eat! :)
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(Mini-apples, you see?  Oh, never mind!)
Come to think of it "ha-ha" is also an old kind of livestock boundary [urlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha (but it's usually 2 words "ha ha" or hyphenated: "ha-ha"). Not sure whether the High Hay should have a mini ha-ha?
~~~~~~
Join us for a read-through of The Two Towers (Book III of Lord of the Rings) in the Reading-Room - 13 September- 29 November 2015.
Schedule etc: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=864064#864064
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Otaku-sempai
Elvenhome
Sep 14 2015, 2:47pm
Post #9 of 33
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Bilbo DID give away all the treasure taken from the Stone-trolls hoard.
He didn't think it proper to keep the spoils of such rapscallions.
In the film-continuity we can assume that he had to make due with the treasure recovered from the Trolls as he came away from the Mountain with very little beyond his mithril shirt--and some trinket he found in the goblin-tunnels.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
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Darkstone
Elvenhome
Sep 14 2015, 4:36pm
Post #10 of 33
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.. become so corrupted he wouldn't have been able to give up the Ring:
There was an old king on a high throne:
his white beard lay on knees of bone;
his mouth savoured neither meat nor drink,
nor his ears song; he could only think
of his huge chest with carven lid
where pale gems and gold lay hid
in secret treasury in the dark ground;
its strong doors were iron-bound.
The swords of his thanes were dull with rust,
his glory fallen, his rule unjust,
his halls hollow, and his bowers cold,
but king he was of elvish gold.
-From The Hoard, by JRR Tolkien
TL;DR: Too much gold is bad, m'kay?
******************************************
Brother will fight brother and both be his slayer,
brother and sister will violate all bonds of kinship;
hard it will be in the world, there will be much failure of honor,
an age of axes, an age of swords, where shields are shattered,
an age of winds, an age of wolves, where the world comes crashing down;
no man will spare another.
-From the Völuspá, 13th century
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Bracegirdle
Doriath
Sep 14 2015, 8:15pm
Post #11 of 33
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from the swinging '60s.
"Those were the days my friend,
we thought they'd never end."
*Humming along, head on a swivel* 
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."
-John Wheeler
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Bracegirdle
Doriath
Sep 14 2015, 8:25pm
Post #12 of 33
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Film? Film? There's a Film? *Ba-doom-Boom*
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Sincerely,
Outta Touch P.H.D., M.D., D.D.S., D.V.D., V.D., esq. 
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."
-John Wheeler
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Darkstone
Elvenhome
Sep 14 2015, 8:59pm
Post #13 of 33
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The writer guy changes a lot of the story, cutting good parts (Where are the Elves at Helm's Deep?) and adding in weird stuff of his own (Tom Bombadil????) Show some respect for the material, Mr. Tolkien!!!
******************************************
Brother will fight brother and both be his slayer,
brother and sister will violate all bonds of kinship;
hard it will be in the world, there will be much failure of honor,
an age of axes, an age of swords, where shields are shattered,
an age of winds, an age of wolves, where the world comes crashing down;
no man will spare another.
-From the Völuspá, 13th century
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Otaku-sempai
Elvenhome
Sep 14 2015, 9:22pm
Post #14 of 33
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From what I gather it's a whole trilogy. I think that one or two people 'round here might have seen them. That novelization must have been based on a really early draft; it is almost unrecognizable from the movies.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Sep 14 2015, 9:23pm)
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dernwyn
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Sep 15 2015, 4:24pm
Post #15 of 33
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...or, early draught?
Definitely portions of the movies were based on early drafts. Thorin's ride down the river of molten gold on a barrow is clearly taken from Bilbo's ride in a large cup down the river of Smaug's blood after the Hobbit slew him, in one of the earliest drafts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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CamdenMcAndrews
Ossiriand
Sep 17 2015, 8:08am
Post #17 of 33
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Just for grins... I think of this every time I see the scenes inside Erebor in the movies. I read somewhere that all the gold ever mined would fit into cube about 15m on a side.
To envision such a thing, I created such a cube in Second Life.
Click on the image to see a larger version.
I put my Industrial Victorian mansion next to it and had some folks pose with the thing so you can get some idea of the scale. (Crystal and I are standing on top of the cube. The lady at its base is Anja Somerset.) That house, if it were built in real life, would be about five stories above ground, including the attic; houses in Second Life tend to be about double their real-life height, for camera relief. The doors and windows give you some idea of the actual scale of the thing.
I'd guess that the amount of gold depicted in the Hobbit films actually exceeds all the gold ever mined by man throughout all of history. No wonder Thorin went crazy about it!
(Second Life residents might want to know that I took this picture at Sandbox Pristina.)
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CaptainMorgan
Nevrast
Sep 19 2015, 7:55pm
Post #18 of 33
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Pirates!!!
YO HO HO, A LIPEY LIBER FWEE
-Captain Edward Dregg
A pirate always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.
-Captain JP Morgan
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Bracegirdle
Doriath
Sep 22 2015, 9:32pm
Post #19 of 33
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Definitely portions of the movies were based on lots of draughts! :)
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Definitely portions of the movies were based on early drafts
”. . . computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
- Popular Mechanics, 1949
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CamdenMcAndrews
Ossiriand
Sep 23 2015, 1:12am
Post #20 of 33
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Now I'm wondering how many ships it would take to move that much gold, assuming they could be moved by ship at all. I suppose they could take the cargo down to the Long Lake and then up the Forest River as far as it's navigable, and then a portage across to the Anduin. That would be the first of two difficult portages on this trip, so they'll need to pack the gold on carts and also carry the beasties to pull the carts.
So then, here we are at the Anduin with all our animals, teamsters, carts, gold, and a small army of guards to protect the lot; and no boats. Ah, the carts must actually be amphibious barges; lots and lots of them to carry, not only the gold, but all the supplies we'll need for this extended vacation. Maybe they would be designed like the Conestoga wagon, which is the only wagon that I know of actually designed from the keel up to be amphibious and move heavy freight.* At least now we'll be going downstream so we don't need to worry so much about rowing or sails.
We need to disguise that gold somehow. Maybe we could store it leather sacks inside burlap sacks labeled as potatoes and barley. Our cover story will be that we're carry supplies for the small army of guards that are with us. Maybe we're off to help out somebody's cousin in the east in a battle against evil. I assume we're carrying coins, so we'll need to pad them so that they don't clink. Grain-sized sacks of gold would be incredibly heavy; we'll need to carry cranes to move them around.
The labor and materials required to manufacture all those wagons and all that equipment would be staggering in comparison to the previous economy of Lake-town. We'll have them well on the way to rebuilding the cities of Dale and Esgaroth before we're ready to set out.
So then, down the Anduin to the sea, where we again cause a major economic disruption when we want to hire ships to carry us and our carts, critters, and men along the coast to the port at the Grey Havens. Fortunately, we were wise enough to send couriers with full purses to hire the building of the ships while we were busily rebuilding Dale.
When at last we arrive at the port at the Grey Havens, we'll use the opposite cover story: Our little army has to go west against some far-off threat of evil. And so we rumble into Hobbiton.
Erm... now then, dozens of wagons and an army of guards have just arrived at Bag-End, and it's time to offload several tons of gold coins. Of course, Bilbo went back to Bag-End early, arriving years before the gold and its army. We might hope that he has already had more store rooms dug into his home to accommodate the mass.
Maybe Gandalf journeyed back to Erebor to take care of the gold expedition. It seems to be the kind of lark he would enjoy. But now what? The last thing we want to do is to attract the attention of every crook in Middle Earth to a huge horde of gold in the middle of The Shire? So how do we explain this great crime against normalcy, all these men and bags and wagons mucking up the roads and chasing the barmaids, to the gentle folk of Hobbiton?
*The Conestoga was a heavy freight wagon used in the eastern United States back in the day. It was not the covered wagons used by settlers on the Oregon Trail; way too heavy for that. But in the case of moving all that gold from Erebor to Hobbiton, we can afford the operating cost.
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Otaku-sempai
Elvenhome
Sep 23 2015, 2:34am
Post #21 of 33
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"I don't know if it has occurred to you that, even if you could steal the gold bit by bit -- a matter of a hundred years or so -- you could not get it very far? Not much use on the mountain-side? Not much use in the forest? Bless me! Had you never thought of the catch? A fourteenth share, I suppose, or something like it, those were the terms, eh? But what about delivery? What about cartage? What about armed guards and tolls?" And Smaug laughed aloud.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
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swordwhale
Dor-Lomin
Sep 28 2015, 4:50pm
Post #22 of 33
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fan...
crossover...
ever.
bigger on the inside...
Na 'Aear, na 'Aear! Mýl 'lain nallol, I sûl ribiel a i falf 'loss reviol...
To the sea, to the sea, the white gulls are crying, the wind is blowing and the white foam is flying...
Member of Manure Movers Local 101, Raptor Wranglers & Rehab, and Night Fury Trainers Assoc. Owned by several cats and a very small team of maniacal sled dogs... sorry Radagast, those rabbits were delicious...
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swordwhale
Dor-Lomin
Sep 28 2015, 5:01pm
Post #23 of 33
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bwaa haaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
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reminds me of an essay called, I think, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, in which the author deconstructs the relationship between Superman and Lois Lane... or... don't look too closely at your fantasy or it will fall apart...
actually, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_Steel,_Woman_of_Kleenex
I digress...
what are all those Conestoga wagons doing here?????
I have personally paddled the Conestoga.. river, from whence the wagon got its name... the wagon wouldn't float in that, or the Susquehanna into which it flows. It does, however, rise frantically on the heels of major storms, which causes every yahoo with a bucket that floats to come out, sans PFD, and end up on a pile of debris getting rescued...
http://lancasteronline.com/news/kayaker-rescued-escape-conestoga-river-on-their-own-after-boats/article_65df7530-2ebb-5f84-9d31-f9784181060a.html
So, after all that rebuilding, does Bilbo have any gold left?
bigger on the inside...
Na 'Aear, na 'Aear! Mýl 'lain nallol, I sûl ribiel a i falf 'loss reviol...
To the sea, to the sea, the white gulls are crying, the wind is blowing and the white foam is flying...
Member of Manure Movers Local 101, Raptor Wranglers & Rehab, and Night Fury Trainers Assoc. Owned by several cats and a very small team of maniacal sled dogs... sorry Radagast, those rabbits were delicious...
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CamdenMcAndrews
Ossiriand
Sep 28 2015, 10:17pm
Post #24 of 33
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We'll need to make some incredibly broad assumptions to guess how much Bilbo's 1/14 share of the loot would be; but what the heck, I worked for NASA for more than 30 years so I'm used to deriving precise answers from wild guesses!
So then... - Assume the total volume of Smaug's horde is about the size of that 15-meter cube I showed a picture of.
- Density of gold = 19.3 gm/cm3
- Market value of gold = US$ 1,132.00 per troy ounce (spot market price that I just now looked up on the net)
- Total value of Smaug's horde = US$ 2,370,674,883,150 (2.37 trillion dollars in US parlance) in today's world market.
- Bilbo's 1/14th share = US$ 169,333,920,225 (169 billion dollars in US parlance)
- Average personal income = US$ 28,424.74 (based on current New Zealand median annual income converted to US$)
- Fully burdened labor rate = US$ 56,000 (roughly double the average income)
- Total labor Bilbo could buy with his share of the loot = 3 million man-years
Now we see the magnitude of the loot we're talking about. There are some awful pitfalls here, such as the inevitability of Dale suddenly having a boom-town economy with such a huge influx of gold, but it still remains that if he could get people to work for gold coins, Bilbo would have commanded enough wealth to employ everybody in Middle Earth for the next year or so.
So, I think, yes, he'd still have a mind-boggling volume of gold left over even after rebuilding several cities along the way, along with all the roads, highways, bridges, and ferries. If he managed this investment wisely, the continuing income from all those projects would be staggering.
Addendum: That much gold would weigh 65,137,500 kg. According to the Wikipedia, a Conestoga wagon can carry 5,400 kg (12,000 lb) so Bilbo will need 12,000 Conestoga wagons to move his gold, plus at least that many again to transport the people, livestock, equipment, and consumables for this trip. That's going to require a lot of wood. No wonder Treebeard was peeved.
(This post was edited by CamdenMcAndrews on Sep 28 2015, 10:31pm)
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Otaku-sempai
Elvenhome
Sep 28 2015, 10:27pm
Post #25 of 33
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Assume the total volume of Smaug's horde is about the size of that 15-meter cube I showed a picture of.
Does this assumption hold up? Is it based on the hoard seen in the Peter Jackson films? Because Smaug's treasure in the book is likely to be much less (although still quite substantial). This is, perhaps, the standard your figures should be based on (click on image to enlarge):
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Sep 28 2015, 10:34pm)
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