One of the few times that Scrooge’s fortune was given in actual numbers (rather that made-up things like “fantasticatillions”) was in Uncle Scrooge #4 (October 27, 1953, with a cover date of December 1953). The story is titled “The Menehune Mystery” in I.N.D.U.C.K.S. In it, Donald reports Scrooge;s fortune as being what can be better transcribed as $5 X 10^77 and 16 cents.
I found this in Jack L. Chalker’s “An Informal Biography of Scrooge McDuck” (Mirage Press, 1974) p. 25, and cross-referenced to these pages in INDUCKS:
It’s not at all true that the Money Bin was never more than one/third full. There was at least one story in which it was so full that it was cracking at the seams and threatening to drown Duckburg in coins. Lots of other stories showed Scrooge diving into the coins as if he were entering a swimming pool. As with every single thing in comics, nothing outside the story were ever as important as the panel in the story.
His name wasn’t mentioned earlier, but it was Carl Barks who created Scrooge and wrote and drew all the classic stories, until the 60s. Nothing he didn’t create should be taken as canon.
Agreed, but I’m willing to cut Don Rosa some slack on this. He took over the Uncle Scrooge series and has been scrupulous in trying to adhere to Barks’ canon as much as possible (even working around inconsistencies) while adding to the legend. His Life and Times of Uncle Scrooge and its supplement are absolutely wonderful (even if some fault his artwork as too “cluttered”). It’s a pity that the former is now split into two grossly overpriced volumes and the latter seems unavailable.
Not me. I flatly dislike his writing. I know I’m in the minority on this, but Carl Barks is one of the few people who can be said to be truly irreplaceable.
In Mathemagic Land, Donald uses the old “one penny on the first square of the chessboard” gambit to con Scrooge into owing him (2^64)-1 pennies, which if I’m doing the math correctly, comes to about 184 quadrillion dollars.
Scrooge responds to the effect of, “There isn’t that much money in all of my money vaults! There isn’t that much money in the entire world!”
Donald forgives the debt in return for Scrooge forgiving a small debt that he had been harassing Donald about at the beginning of the story.
Barks was amazing, but he wrote without thought for “canon”. I absolutely love Don Rosa’s effort to make a coherent narrative, but I admit it might be because his works where coming out while I was a teen.
Conan Doyle wrote without thought for “canon.” So did Stan Lee. All the originators just plain write. A few create characters or worlds in which others want to play. Canon is always backward looking. Some canons are easier to define than others. There are only 56 Sherlock Holmes stories. Lee never wrote all of Marvel even back in the 1960s. Fandom is often messy.
Hot damn! A stack of Benjamins that large would have a mass of 5 x 1072 kg, which is more massive than the observable universe (including dark matter and dark energy), and would have a Schwarzschild radius of ~4.61 x 1042 miles!
Proof that the Disney Universe takes place inside a black hole?
I prefer the alliterative Norwegian: “Smaken er som baken. Delt.” It translates best if switching from definite singular to indefinite plural. “Tastes are like bottoms. Split.”
