Mithril will probably turn out to be titanium or osmium or something of the sort (well, not osmium, I think that’s too heavy). We have it too, but because we have iron and steel it won’t be practical to duplicate and your mail shirt will be a curiosity. Which might make it more valuable, if you can find a buyer.
All of you carrying mithril through the portal are carrying it the wrong way through. The secret of producing such a metal would in fact be worth a fortune… and it was. Too late to be getting in on that game.
For myself? I’d start with a couple of pocketfuls of nice big gems. I’d mostly favor star sapphires, but I might toss in a few rubies and emeralds, too. Possibly pearls, if the dragon’s world has dire oysters that can make them bigger than we get here on Earth. No diamonds-- No point in wasting pocket space on mere semiprecious stones. I’d probably also grab a little gold, but only just enough to easily liquidate to fund the trip to the auction houses for the gems. Those gems would bring me enough liquid wealth that I’d never need to worry about money for the rest of my life, and what point is there beyond that?
My next thought would be magic items, but the OP has ruled those out… so how about magic items that I don’t need to bring back to benefit from them? Give me some of those tomes that permanently improve ability scores. I’ll take, oh, one each for Int, Cha, and Con.
And after that, the next biggest treasure is the dragon itself. XT and Trinopus have the right idea with DNA samples and teeth, and I’d probably grab some of those, too… but what I really want is the dragon eggs.
As I alluded to in post #8, a 14.6 carat (1/10 ounce) blue diamond recently sold for 57 million dollars. Even more recently, a 59.6 carat (0.42 ounce) pink diamond sold for 71.2 million dollars. Large diamonds, especially large colored diamonds, are just about the densest source of money you are likely to find in a traditional dragon horde.
The problem is that diamonds are very carefully monitored and tracked. Taking some gemstones is a good idea, but diamonds are probably not a great choice despite being so valuable.
So tell the authorities to do an isotopic testing on it to prove it doesn’t come from one of the known mines, tell those authorities that it is none of their damn business where you have your secret mine, and find the multiple rich people willing to say “Shut up and take my money.”
Do you not think you would get similar scrutiny if you showed up with pounds of gold, silver, or other precious stones?
Books.
I can’t believe no one else has said this. I’m taking a blanket and I’m piling it with books and I’m hauling them back to my lair. I mean, library. Of course. What else would I mean.
And yeah, maybe a big, glitzy, tiara, for fun, but only because I can’t balance books on my head.
Are piles of books things usually depicted as being in dragon hoards?
Dragons vary by size, but I don’t think you’re gonna be carrying the head of Smaug or Vermithrax Pejorative any country mile.
You could sell off small amounts of gold trivially, it simply doesn’t have the level of scrutiny that a multi-million diamond is going to have. I’m not saying you wouldn’t be able to sell it or that you would go to jail, but you might not be able to. It could be very difficult. Legitimate auctions houses wouldn’t touch it with a thousand foot pole. I don’t know about you but I’d have no idea where or how to sell a diamond worth millions that most people would assume is illegal in some way. I would probably bring a couple back with me anyway, why not. They don’t weigh much and if you sell them great and if not they look pretty as a trophy. I’m just saying I wouldn’t rely solely on precious gems in this once in a lifetime opportunity.
The head of such a beast is worth trying to drag. Or I can game this as others have and claim the use of some magical item to let me get it to the portal. You take what you want and let me worry about taking what I want.
Colored Gemstones–rubies, emeralds, sapphires, etc, top the list, if magic stuff is out.
A giant chuck of Alexandrite would be nice.
A little bit of Dragon DNA might be valuable, too…
A few people have said this but… would it? If you got a few vials of blood or saliva or what-have-you, what are you going to do with it?
Lots of luck draggin’ this dragon.
I’d imagine at least ledgers, deeds and titles would be scattered among the lucre. While they would lose their intended value outside their homeworld, they’d still be valuable as anthropological artifacts. More to the point, you have the raw material for truly authentic fiction.
Fuck diamonds, George Lucas sold Star Wars for 6 Billion smackeroos!
You’re telling me you wouldn’t want to be the guy to have a genuine dragon wang on his mantelpiece?
Dragons might be too proud to collect unfaceted diamonds, but maybe you could find a few large ones, then drive to Arkansas (flying probably a bad idea) to create a paper trail and say you found them in the diamond park. You’d would be scrutinized as you’d set a world record, but wouldn’t be scrutinized as a thief at least.
DeBeers would send goons after you, and thieves would kidnap you and torture you until you told them where you got it.
For a few smaller ones this would work. For a fist sized uncut, they could tell it wasnt from Arkansas.
Nobody said it was a giant dragon. It is just as, or even more, likely to be closer to this size.
Diamonds are worth a lot of money mostly just because deBeers says they are. If you bring back super-valuable diamonds from an unknown (non-deBeers) source, they’re going to make sure they’re not worth a lot of money. And some of their ways of making sure of that might be quite unpleasant.
I’m not sure it’s worth bringing books back, though: Much easier to just take pictures of all of the pages, and bring those back, provided electronic devices work normally in dragonworld.
Well, you can’t take the ring of Giant Strength back through the portal, but you could use it to carry the loot to the portal. I’m just saying…