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Lego George Lucas and $4.05B

July 4, 2023

A fictitious rendering of a Lego Star Wars set called “George Lucas with 4.05 Billion Dollars”, featuring a George Lucas minifig lying on top of a vast ocean of green 1x2 plates with currency print.

This is actually a great way to illustrate how much a billion dollars actually is!

According to Bricklink, a 1×2 Lego tile weighs 0.26 g. If each tile represents a dollar, this set would contain four billion tiles, clocking in at over one million kilograms. Delivering this number of bricks would require 49 standard cargo containers (each nominally rated at 21,600 kg).

Even if each tile represents $100, the largest denomination that US paper money comes in, we would still end up with more than 40 million tiles, weighing more than ten tons. Imagine holding a tiny Lego tile that you can sell for $100, and looking up to see that you have ten tons of it stored in a warehouse. That’s how much $4B is worth.

A billion dollars is an incredibly, mind-blowingly vast sum of wealth for one person to own today; an amount so huge that most people don’t really comprehend how large it is.

And once you realize how much $4B actually is, realize that Bill Gates has 29 times that amount, and Elon Musk has 62 times that amount.